Pattern Recognition is a weekly trends column about the intersection of ideas, commerce and culture.

At Billy Reed’s New York Fashion Week party last fall, held at his NoHo store, taxidermied animal heads looked down upon the Bluegrass band and stacks of $225 jeans as a roomful of bourbon-swilling, iPhone-toting hipsters caught it all on video. At first glance the tattooed 20- and 30-somethings seemed out of place among the racks of plaid shirts, as if Manhattan had slipped below the Mason-Dixon Line for the evening.

But Reid, an Alabama-based designer who also collaborates with labels from Stetson to J. Crew, has become a symbol of the New Americana—an East Coast aesthetic that mixes southern propriety with preppy casualness, and tradition with trend. And it’s a moment in the culture which is being reflected by more than just boat shoes and seersucker.

Southern–fried style blog “Social Primer,” known for celebrating monogrammed plastic roadie cups (for your Jim Beam and Coke at the U of K football game), has gone mainstream, to the point of being featured on “Good Day New York.” “Take Ivy,” the iconic ‘60s’ Japanese photo book celebrating Kennedy-era American college fashions, was reissued last year. And “True Prep”—subtitled “It’s a Whole New Old World,” and itself a sequel to ‘80s period piece “The Official Preppy Handbook” – was launched in September (at Brooks Brothers, naturally, with a party attended by both the label’s proto-prep designer, Thom Browne, and “Mad Men” costumer Janie Bryant.)

What is attracting consumers to this sepia-toned picture of the present?

For one, we’re broke–or have been recently. And so we look homeward, toward the blue jeans and the comfort of a “local” barbecue restaurant, of the type that have been surging in popularity even among the Yankees of New York City (even if the pulled pork at Hill Country or the Breslin turns out to be a little more expensive, to suit our organic tastes. )

Home is a place whose sphere we can control. Which is a compelling idea when so much abroad seems threatening, be it in Afghanistan, Iran or Japan.

The declining buying power of the American dollar, concern about carbon emissions and the trend for locally-grown food all feed our fondness for the home fire. It’s not that everyone is running around in plaid shirts, toting highballs and whistlin’ Dixie. But consumers now expect the menu to tell them that the pork for the barbecue came from a farm within driving distance. And less expensive than a bottle of fine wine in a Manhattan restaurant is a premium bourbon from a family-owned distillery, bought at the liquor store. (Super-premium bourbon sales were up 16.2% last year, according to Whisky magazine.)

For several years, the remarkably prescient J.Crew CEO Millard “Mickey” Drexler has been resuscitating American heritage brands from Alden to Red Wing, as well as hitching his wagon to emerging talents like Billy Reid. A 2010 New Yorker profile articulated his vision for the company as not just selling clothes and accessories but telling a “story” to the buyer about his brand.

Drexler understands that a lasting consumer relationship requires a narrative, one that he is telling through the language of Americana.