Category Archives: Virginia

Here is an excerpt from the the New York Times Review of  “True Prep” and a link to the full review:

In 1980 “The Official Preppy Handbook” arrived as a field guide to the habits of the cotillion-hopping, madras-wearing, loafer-shod upper crust. Was it a valentine, a joke or a prophecy? This much is clear: It began life as a $3.95 paperback and stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year. Copies were plentiful, yet asking prices for used ones today can easily top $100 and sometimes exceed $1,000. Somebody must think it contains useful information.

When Lisa Birnbach co-wrote and edited it, she was in some ways prescient: the J. Crew catalog wasn’t even a gleam in a marketer’s eye. But much of “The Official Preppy Handbook” just codified widely known information about high-WASP habits and affectations. (It also borrowed from “Take Ivy,” a 1965 style guide published in Japan.) Its original readers, whether they were knowing or curious, were apt to be of boarding-school age or a little older. Now they’re pushing 50.

After the handbook’s huge success Ms. Birnbach helped bring forth a wide array of less necessary titles. (Among them: “1,003 Great Things to Smile About” in 2004 and “40% Off Is the New Black” in 2009.) And the world changed — a lot. Among the post-1980 phenomena with which “The Official Preppy Handbook” could not conjure are the Internet, the McMansion, the cellphone, synthetic fleece and the emergence of famous rehab facilities as today’s new boarding schools.

So Ms. Birnbach has returned to the subject she knows best. Together with Chip Kidd, the graphic designer and writer with the certifiably preppy first name, she has come up with “True Prep: It’s a Whole New Old World,” a surprisingly worthwhile sequel to the now-creaky “Handbook.” This new compendium moves beyond school days to address matters newly relevant for the core readership: how to remarry, how to dress for a funeral and how to deal with the collateral damage caused by decades’ worth of the party-hearty behavior described in the first book.

via Books of The Times – Lisa Birnbach’s ‘True Prep’ for Ultra-Modern Times – NYTimes.com.