Interview with WFU Style Alum: Gracie Wiener
By. Maren Beverly
I have a theory that most fashion girls are veterans of the 2012-2015 preppy Tumblr generation. (Myself, included.)
One of these girls is Gracie Wiener. She’s a Wake Forest graduate, a social media manager at Air Mail News, and a TikTok guru. (She also attended the Lilly Pulitzer warehouse sale back in the day. She gets it!)
Most recently, Gracie has fallen into internet infamy as the founder of the “Ironic Boat & Tote” — a sarcastic, hilarious, and fun twist on the classic monogrammed L.L.Bean totes.
A preppy staple, these reinvented totes play with the customization feature. People are embroidering things like “psycho,” “can U not,” “gone girl,” and “belieber.” The internet is eating it up.
Gracie, who admits that she’s “so preppy at heart it’s painful” and who was once “preppy Tumblr” famous, sparked this phenomenon by accident, despite her childhood affinity for the accouterments of prep.
“I saw on Instagram that Juliana Salazar had taken a photo of some random woman she saw at Paris Fashion Week who was carrying a bag that said ‘psycho.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my god, I need this right now.’ I no-joke flipped from Instagram to browser and purchased it. I’ve been using it endlessly since then, posting photos. I thought it was really funny. There were always people paying attention to it but it wasn’t blowing up,” she explained.
She never anticipated it to become the thing, the accessory — which is what makes its virality so refreshing.
After she had a few friends order their own IB&T, she started an Instagram account to document the quippy embroidery.
By a stroke of luck (or fate), an Instagram with a huge following, @things.i.bought.and.liked, reposted the account. She went to bed with 200 followers and woke up with 5,000. The account now has 25.7k followers.
Gracie admits, “I’ve had a long history in my life of starting Instagram accounts trying to become viral. This was not it.”
Despite the tote’s generational history, this revived take on a classic feels utterly of the moment. The renewed interest in J.Crew and the fast rise of the ‘Coastal Grandmother’ certainly created a perfect storm.
I asked Gracie her thoughts on the rise of the ‘Coastal Grandmother,’ as it seemed to live among the IB&T movement.
“I kind of laugh, cuz that’s really how I dress. Nancy Meyers – I love Nancy Meyers movies. It’s funny, I’ve had a few people ask me on TikTok or Instagram for my takes, and it’s like — I have nothing to say here because my wardrobe is oversized men’s button-downs and big heavy knit sweaters and linen pants— so it wasn’t anything shocking for me.”
The quality of the bags, along with their attainable price point, makes the Ironic Boat & Tote so alluring, especially in the landscape of luxury leather bags that cost more than NYC Rent. “These things are so classic and tried and true. They worked for our grandmother. They’ve been around. They’ve withstood the test of time. People continue to turn to those because they haven’t been exhausted for a reason,” Gracie noted.
Another serendipitous outcome of the IB&T is that it’s flipped the sentiment surrounding a traditionally waspy accessory.
Gracie elaborated: “One thing that’s really special to me is how so many people feel like this has opened up having L.L.Bean be accessible to them. They didn’t come from a waspy background. Or, there are people who’ve said, ‘I have an ethnic last name, or I didn’t have a middle name, or I had multiple middle names, so I couldn’t do a monogram.’ It felt like a really waspy thing that was protected.”
The buzz surrounding the IB&T is certainly one of the most intriguing style happenings of the summer. “I’ve truly only seen so much joy around it, which is great,” she said.
So, what do you want to be monogrammed on your Ironic Boat & Tote? I’m personally considering “Karjenner” (Kardashian-Jenner). As always, I’m open to suggestions.
