Three decades after "The Official Preppy Handbook" was first unleashed, a follow-up called "True Prep" is in the works -- hoping to reignite preppy fervor, update the mindset and explain just what it means to be a Chip or a Muffy in a Barack world.
The original volume, a slim, plaid-covered paperback that poked fun at the gin-soaked polo-shirt and loafer-wearing set, started out as a piquant bit of mockery but, like "Liar's Poker," a bestseller about bond traders, and "Wall Street," the movie in which Michael Douglas declared greed to be good, it ended up being adopted as a kind of guidebook for those who wanted in.
The book eventually sold 1.3 million copies, many to aspiring prepsters who wanted to know where to shop, what to wear and how to fully appreciate what it called "the virtues of pink and green."
Among those buyers was Chip Kidd, one of the industry's best-known book designers, who loved the original as a teenager growing up near Reading, Pa., where he attended public high school and adored topsiders. The handbook, he said, "changed my life."
Now he has teamed with the editor and one of the writers of the original volume, Lisa Birnbach, for the follow-up, due out in September. "As a fan, that is why I kind of instigated this whole thing," he said of the new volume. "I wanted the next book."
The blogosphere is filled with fans eagerly awaiting the new book. The first handbook "was like a bible to us,' said Alice Richardson, 44, who blogs about preppy things at "Summer Is a Verb."
Birnbach, 52, insists that the first book was intended to gently mock prep-school culture. She says she was surprised by how many people took it so seriously.
"I didn't think people wanted to be like us," said Birnbach, who attended Riverdale Country School in New York and Brown University, then went on to enjoy what some might called the Life Well-Prepped: writing college guides and co-writing books about friendship, motherhood and being Jewish, as well as working a stint at a correspondent on CBS' "Early Show."
