Preppy : Cultivating Ivy Style [Anglais] [Relié]

I found "Preppy" to be profoundly disappointing. As I have most of the "Preppy Genre" sitting on my shelves already, I noticed right away that this book, lovely though the photos may be, is a splashy mix of every other attempt to capture the preppy style. There were many moments when I thought I was actually reading other books on the subject that I bought years ago. "Jocks and Nerds," another Rizolli style book from twenty years ago seems to have been used as a template. The writers include almost no original text, preferring to quote from every other book previously published on the subject. If I want to read what Lisa Birnbach has to say about being a prep, I can just pull down one of her two books.
As for photographs, "Preppy" includes many that have been used as examples by countless other books, articles and blogs. Any that I hadn't seen in other places were lesser examples than those one can enjoy in "Take Ivy" or Salk's book on WASP style. The book devolves even more when the chapters become endless collections of Ralph Lauren ads or those who have sought to copy Ralph Lauren. Does anyone interested in this subject not already know that Ralph Lauren's empire has been based on mimicking upper class fashion? Anyone? There is an ongoing theme of "aspiration" in this book, though I disagree that many preppy dressers are aspiring to be WASPS. The look has been popular in Japan for decades. Does that mean Japanese preppies want to be white Episcopalians from Greenwich? This is about style, not a social class, so the disjointed thesis was tedious. The Kennedy family is represented in many images in the book, but as Catholics, they can't even be described as WASPS. They are preppy.
I could have created my own version of "Preppy" and saved quite a bit of money by gluing together some cut out magazine ads, Brooks Brothers catalogues and a few lines of text from books I already own.
Lilly Pulizter wrote the forward, basically the only original thought in the entire book, in which she claims to know little about fashion and "plans to learn a thing or two from this book." Poor Lilly, I hope they gave her a free copy.

In a blog interview posted not long before the publication of True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World, Lisa Birnbach explained how, all those decades ago, her publishers wanted the book that became The Official Preppy Handbook to focus solely on clothing and accessories, and be titled "The Preppy Catalog." She argued, she said, that prep clothing couldn't be adequately or accurately described without the full context of preppy lifestyle, history, and worldview ... and thus "The Official Preppy Handbook," in all its satirical but affectionate beauty, was born.

Three-plus decades later, Jeffrey Banks and Doria de La Chapelle have finally given us that "Preppy Catalog" the original publishers wanted. It wasn't worth the wait.

The first several chapters are a whirlwind bus tour of the history of preppy dress, hitting all the requisite educational and literary sights and digging a few interesting photos out of the archive, but adding very little to what anyone who has a real interest in this already knows. Indeed, there is considerable debate in some circles about the extent to which "preppy" and "Ivy" overlap. Our authors don't seem to know or care: as the subtitle shows, they regard them as synonyms.

By far the most disappointing part of this book, however, is the final two chapters, when history is set aside and prep-as-she-is-lived-today is supposedly reviewed. An appendix lists a dozen or so "online prep" blogs, and there are probably a hundred more preppy-themed pages on Tumblr alone, which the authors could usefully have harvested to give us photos and stories of interesting people doing interesting things with classic preppy and Ivy ingredients. Instead, they prove the extent to which "preppy" really has become a commodity by defining modern prep solely through the work of mass-market fashion designers, advertising photographers, and a handful of celebrities. Every designer who ever buttoned down a collar seems to be name-dropped (author Jeffrey Banks has high praise for designer Jeffrey Banks), and a discouragingly huge percentage of the photos come from Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger advertising spreads.

On the whole, the authors' answer to the subtitular topic of "cultivating Ivy Style" would seem to begin and end with: Buy Ralph Lauren. Some people worry that the Internet is making books obsolete. "Preppy" is a case where the Internet makes a book unnecessary and irrelevant.

Though highly promoted, this book just looks like a collection of old Ralph Lauren ads. Disappointing. Pictorial, with little substantial background re. development of "preppy" style. There is some history - but pretty lite.