True Prep Captures the Essence of Popped Collar
October 17th, 2010 Comments Off
Are the latest J.Crew, L.L. Bean, and Patagonia catalogues sitting in your campus mailbox? Do you use summer as a verb and speak fondly of Vineyard vacations with Mummy and Daddy? Are you wearing Nantucket red pants embroidered with navy blue whales as you read this article? Or have you just been dying for a pair? In True Prep: It’s a Whole New Old World (publication date: September 7, 2010), author-journalist Lisa Birnbach and designer Chip Kidd invite preppy and prep-curious readers to take a walk in their deck shoes and learn about the “safe and lovely bubble” of “prepdom.”
True Prep builds upon Birnbach’s first foray into prep lit, The Official Preppy Handbook (1979), which sold nearly 2 million copies and topped The New York Times bestseller list. The original guide waxed eloquent about the “virtues of pink and green” and “etiquette in Connecticut,” and taught readers how to mimic a tony “Boston Brahmin” accent and the “Locust Valley Lockjaw.” Though the original Preppy Handbook dubbed Hamilton the 2nd most “outstandingly preppy” college in the country (after Babson College) and noted its “unusual proportion of [men] under 5’10”,” the Hill is nowhere to be found in this update.
In the same playfully irreverent tone that borders on satirical, Birnbach and Kidd discuss how the preppy lifestyle has evolved in the last thirty years and offer advice on keeping it classy in the 21st century. Who would have thought that preps, known for draping their cable-knit sweaters over their shoulders, would be so taken with polyester fleece?
As America’s J.Crew-clad First Lady and “thin, black, preppy basketball-playing lawyer” President demonstrate, you do not have to be a WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) to live the life. Nowadays, preps are as diverse as the selection of patchwork belts at Vineyard Vines. In a contemporary twist, the book highlights the most popular African-American prep resorts and includes a map by literary critic Edmund White that illustrates where to find preppy gays in America: Washington, D.C., is “gay preppy central,” we learn, while Yale is “definitely the gayest of the Ivy League universities.”
You do not even have to be born into a preppy family anymore. True Prep authors encourage adoption: “This baby from an orphanage––God knows how far away––will now be privileged. She will get to play field hockey and tennis. She will get to learn Mandarin Chinese in the third grade . . . and best of all, she will summer.”
While the kinds of preps have changed, the kinds of schools they attend have not. True Prep details the most exclusive ones and their illustrious alumni, in case you are curious about what prep schools Steve Carell (Middlesex), Lisa Kudrow (Taft), and Bill Nye (Sidwell Friends) attended.
Preppy Hamilton seniors might want to check out the list of preppiest careers. Apparently, not-for-profit jobs are more prep than private sector jobs because “any job that helps people really far away (micro-financing in Africa, feeding children in Haiti, and so on) is incredibly prep.”
Birnbach and Kidd especially bemoan the “noise pollution that’s broken down civilized society”: i.e., cell phones. Young prepsters’ attachment to 21st century technology seems as gauche to aged prepsters as wearing socks with Gucci loafers. “Texting (and its dirty cousin sexting) are eroding our capacities for charm, wit, good listening and spelling,” True Prep asserts. “Don’t dare LOL.” Plus, mobiles open up fashion faux pas. “Blackberries or cell phones should never be suspended from your belts (That includes you, President Obama.).” Facebook, too, must be managed carefully, for “Big Mummy is watching.”
And for those who tune into the popular show Gossip Girl for a window on Manhattan’s Upper East Side social scene, the book, for the record, deems the characters too sleazy and not classy enough to be true preps: “Please, all of you, keep the corduroys on, the cameras out of the bedroom, and think of England.”
But while Hamilton may not meet Birnbach’s and Kidd’s standards of prep anymore, try counting the number of Continentals in Barbours and wellies on Martin’s Way when the weather gets colder. Don’t know what those are? Check out True Prep.
