Lisa Birnbach's 'True Prep': 30 years after the 'Preppy Handbook,' what will Bink and Bootsy wear?
In January, Prada’s fall/winter 2010 men’s runway show in Milan included a model in a navy blue blazer and khaki-colored trousers; an unmistakable signal that the preppy aesthetic was surging back into fashion.
April brings word that Lisa Birnbach, co-author and editor of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” is working on a follow-up to her madras-print-covered bible for the boarding school set with "True Prep," which is due to hit shelves a month short of the original's 30th anniversary.
In full disclosure, the first book, published in 1980, occupies a special place in my heart, since it was hitting shelves just as I was hitting campus for my first year at a New England prep school. It served not only as my early sartorial inspiration, but also as a field guide that helped me quickly learn to navigate a world that, as a rural Vermonter, was strange and different. (Though I never earned a proper preppy sobriquet a la Biff, Skip, or Chip myself, my unrequited boarding school crush was dubbed “Cuffy” as a direct result of finding it in the book, and the nickname has lasted for decades.)
