Tommy Hilfiger’s Prep World pop-up comes to the Grove Friday through Sunday
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If you appreciate all things preppy, it’s time to bust out your best pink and green, slip on your boat shoes, pile into the Jeep Wagoneer and head for the Grove shopping center.
That’s because the Tommy Hilfiger Prep World capsule collection will be taking center stage -- showcased in a pop-up beach cottage/boutique -- Friday through Sunday.
It’s part of a globe-trotting PR blitz/retail push for the limited-edition, 60-piece collection of ultra-prep clothes, shoes and accessories that’s on offer in Hilfiger boutiques and website through mid-July.
And they’re not kidding about the globe-trotting part -- the carnival of peripatetic prep has set up shop in Paris, New York City, London and Stockholm so far (a time-lapse video of the cottage being built on Gansevoort Plaza is embedded below) and plans to hit Milan, Italy; Madrid; Sylt, Germany; and Knokke, Belgium, before summer’s end.
Accompanying Hilfiger on each stop is none other than the reigning pop culture princess of prepdom, author Lisa Birnbach (of ‘The Official Preppy Handbook’ and ‘True Prep’ fame) who has been offering her take on the various and assorted manifestations of the preppie aesthetic found in cities around the world.
Although I haven’t had a chance to check out the collection at close range yet (I’ll be doing that this afternoon and expect to report back) from what I’ve seen online, the key pieces (chinos polos, blazers) look like Tommy Hilfiger’s prep rootstock circa 1989 with some of the updated nouveau-prep influences that have made recent collections from designers like Michael Bastian (for Gant), Band of Outsiders and Thom Browne so appealing.
And, if you think you’re the best there is at channeling your inner Biff or Buffy, the social media campaign includes a Prep Style Challenge in which participants upload photos of themselves, in their preppie best, to the Web to be adjudged and voted on by others. The winner gets ‘the ultimate preppy getaway.’
And, I’d like to think, a jaunty pink-and-green grosgrain sash with an allover embroidery of mallard ducks to wear to their next cocktail party.
Tommy Hilfiger Prep World Pop-Up House, 189 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, open Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
-- Adam Tschorn
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