Preppy Handbook… Redux

Is there still room in the 21st century for Muffy and Chip?

True Prep, the sequel to The Official Preppy Handbook, is being readied for release, three decades after the first preppy primer successfully sold 1.3 million copies.

Again – we’ll be advised on where to shop, what to wear, and how to put the greens and pinks together in the right way. In fact, the original primer’s book jacket was plaid.

Back in the 1980’s, the original took a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the class of alcohol buzzed, loafer-clad, polo-shirt prepsters. Greed was good and Wall Street thriving.

Back then, with the country teetering on the edge of a recession, ostensibly disdaining the rich was cool. Today as the country struggles to come out of a severe economic downturn, it’s once again fun to disdain the rich, but while emulating their ways… and their tastes.

True Prep illustrates how Tory Burch, up-scale Verdura jewelry, and an E. Goyard bag make all the difference. Passed over are the original L.L. Bean and duck shoes. The updated version also includes sections on technology etiquette (never text while at table), alcohol rehab, and the gay prepster landscape. A segment on black preppies notes that Michelle Obama is partial to J. Crew.

Sonny Mehta, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group chairman, has committed to a 150,000 first-run for September. “They felt they could do something which really wasn’t a sequel, but something wholly original.”

Lisa Birnbach, one of the writer’s of The Official Preppy Handbook, now 52, is still surprised at the popularity of the franchise.

“I didn’t think people wanted to be like us,” she said. After Riverdale Country School, and then Brown University, Birnbach enjoyed the life of a well-heeled preppy – authoring college guides and other titles on friendship, motherhood, and being Jewish.

“And I didn’t know that two years after this little paperback book came out that I would still be answering letters seeking advice or be on the lecture circuit telling people how to be more like this,” she commented.

The sequel was initiated via Facebook where Birnbach and book designer Chip Kidd met and friended. The rest is a Ralph Lauren lavender blur.

And now, there’s a whole new crop of digital preppy wannabes, idling by their iPads and listening via designer Jawbones – waiting for the wisdom to be dispatched. Older fans, with blogs like “Summer Is a Verb,” are mouse to mouse with the newer generation blogosphere, “Monograms and Manicures.”

Muffy and Chip are back and the preppy brand is alive and well!