Preppy Redux

Pink and green, Lily, Lacoste and L.L. Bean are all back in style. A Bush is heading to the White House. It’s enough to make a preppy heart sing.

When “The Official Preppy Handbook” (Workman Publishing) was published in 1980, it gave hope to anyone who had ever dreamed of sipping bourbon at the Harvard-Yale game, sailing off Martha’s Vineyard or dressing like Oliver Barrett IV of “Love Story” fame. The plaid-covered paperback contained the secrets to attaining elite bliss-- choosing the right schools, vacation spots, the requisite ballroom dance and riding lessons, and what to wear, of course.

Twenty years later, preppy style is back in fashion for spring. But this is not Mummy’s old guard, Kennebunkport preppy. It’s modern prep. Still the design principles are the same: simple, clean lines and classic shapes.

A fresh alternative to Ferragamo’s matronly heels for women are Givenchy’s pink and green ankle-strap spectator pump. Talbots shirtdresses and dowdy separates give way to Cerruti’s lithe belted shirtdress, Dries Van Noten’s schoolgirl Peter Pan-collar blouse and plaid miniskirt, Oscar de la Renta’s take on the tennis skirt. Tired tartans have been replaced by Burberry’s sublimely revived signature plaid skirts, boots and scarves.

For men this spring, Ralph Lauren updates polo shirts and Bermuda shorts in pumped-up colors of Palm Beach (yes “Beach,” not “Springs”), with grosgrain belts, and BCBG’s Max Azria brings back the sweater vest in vibrant hues. This time the clothes are body hugging, not baggy.

Dressing preppy isn’t aspirational anymore, the fashionistas say. Today, preppy fashion no longer signifies social class or ethnic background. “Preppy clearly has a mutating meaning that depends on who wears it and under what circumstances.” said Valerie Steele, chief museum curator of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

After all, with Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Gap and Banana Republic, khakis and polo shirts have become somewhat of an American uniform, even in California.

It’s true, preppy never really was about California. La Jolla is the only bastion of prep in all of Southern California, according to the handbook. But this time around, even West Coast fashion designers are dabbling in the preppy look.

“I’m calling it ‘lumberjack chic,’ a mixing of mountaineer with preppy plaids,” said L.A. fashion designer Estevan Ramos, who is known more for street wear than sailing shorts.

L.A.-based Azria said his aesthetic for spring is “preppy in its purest form, classic and natural.”

Sandy Richman, co-owner of Directives West, an L.A.-based retail consulting firm with more than 70 clients including Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s and JC Penney, said stores are ordering preppy looks, which she refers to as “1950s country-club chic.” She describes it as “sophisticated with polka-dot prints, lots of pleats on short skirts and little jackets worn with printed dresses.” There’s even a new “little black dress”--thanks to the power of preppy--it’s the white pant, she said.

Regardless of what the style is called, its pedigree reaches back farther than the 1950s, according Steele. Brooks Brothers, founded in 1818, takes credit for introducing America to such preppy staples as seersucker in 1830, the button-down polo collar shirt in 1896, Indian madras fabric in 1920 and argyle socks in 1949. The look associated with the Northeast, the upper-middle class, elite Ivy League males and females, remained popular through the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy wore Brooks Brothers suits, polo shirts and chinos for sailing, Steele said.

The conservative look fell radically out of fashion in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the advent of the hippie movement. But by the late 1970s, it was back. And, in 1980, “The Official Preppy Handbook” codified not only the look, but the lifestyle, selling 2.25 million copies before it went out of print two years ago.

Editor Lisa Birnbach, then a reporter for New York’s alternative newspaper The Village Voice, had just 10 weeks to complete her ode to prep, but a lifetime of experience. She grew up in Manhattan, attended the Riverdale Country School in Riverdale, N.Y., and Brown University in Providence, R.I., where she experienced “many prep epiphanies.”

“It was the first time I wore pink and green together, the first time I played squash, and the first time I saw a man wear a polo shirt with an Oxford shirt layered underneath,” said Birnbach, 42, now a writer and CBS television correspondent living in New York.

She and the other contributors were surprised the book struck such a chord. “In our grosgrained cocoon, I guess we didn’t know that Reagan was about to be president and that a conservative wave was imminent.”

Nothing in the book is made up, according to Birnbach. The goal was to make the preppy lifestyle accessible to anyone, though she never thought it would be of such broad interest. Preppy was “so unsexy, so old, so dowdy, so thick-leg enhancing,” she said. “But the seriousness with which people read the book . . . I can’t tell you how many people told me it changed their lives.”

It certainly changed the lives of fashion designers Lauren and Hilfiger, who each ran with the preppy look. “They made it yummier and sexier than J. Press or Brooks Brothers ever dreamed,” said Birnbach. They also made a mint.

Since then, preppy has never really gone out, it’s just morphed, according to FIT’s Steele. In the 1990s, urban African American youths redefined the preppy look and reshaped it into their own hip-hop style, wearing oversized Hilfiger khakis and rugby shirts. Then, in a nice twist, this mutated style filtered back out to the suburban, white middle class.

Now high fashion is on the prep parade. Miguel Adrover’s spring 2001 women’s collection is a perfect example. The Spanish-born designer sent up American fashion, referencing preppy Ralph Lauren nautical themes and logos, as well as hip-hop, western and military style. In Europe, preppy fashion has come to define American dress, Steele said.

Birnbach, for one, is pleased. “The fact is, this is as good a uniform or better than any other. It’s clean, crisp and the cheapest way to look like you have money,” she said.

Not that she is still wearing skiier print turtlenecks, pleated wide-whale cords and Bass penny loafers after two decades. Now, Birnbach prefers flat front corduroys by Katyone Adeli and Calvin Klein, and Helmut Lang separates in black, not navy blue. “I’m at the age where I’m going for hip while I can.”

Birnbach, who said she is considering updating the preppy handbook, is a huge fan of Adrover’s clothes, and for fall, she bought Michael Kors’ modern prep hot pink wraparound skirt. She joked, “I just can’t believe all these designers haven’t called me to see what size I wear!”