Elle Magazine - April 22, 2024 - By VÉRONIQUE HYLAND

What Does Preppy Style Mean Now?

The OG prep chronicler, Lisa Birnbach, helps us break down 2024’s take on the aesthetic.

The author of The Official Preppy Handbook, which went old-world viral in 1980, is peering out from her proverbial Lacoste visor at yet another preppy revival. Whether it’s Emma Chamberlain going full dark academia at Paris Fashion Week, Zendaya mixing tenniscore and 2000s prep in the upcoming Luca Guadagnino film Challengers, or boat shoes, of all things, popping up at Miu Miu, there’s no doubt that the aesthetic has made its umpteenth comeback.

Harper bazaar - FEb 6, 2023 - by Tara Gonzalez

Why Is the New Prep Aesthetic So Sexy?

How a look that was all about baggy khakis suddenly became body-con

“…Reached by phone, Lisa Birnbach, author of The Official Preppy Handbook, is quick to point out that old-school preppiness is understated by nature: “It’s not advertising somebody else’s brand. It’s not going by limousine when you have an old Volvo that you can drive. It’s really the opposite. It’s about not showing off. It’s about blending in.”

None of that feels true for fashion’s current take on preppy style; one that reveals more skin than it covers. The look, to me, is this: You’ve been sent home from prep school for doing something relatively harmless, like wearing a skirt that was an inch too short. The next day as you’re getting dressed, you think, “They accused me of breaking the dress code? This will show them!” It’s not just sexy, it’s defiant. … more”

• Netflix - March 2022

The andy warhol diaries

Lisa Birnbach appears in Episode 3, of the 6 part series inspired by the book “The Andy Warhol Diaries”. After he's shot in 1968, Andy Warhol begins documenting his life and feelings. Those diaries, and this series, reveal the secrets behind his persona.

Tony Yazbeck as Cary Grant, Harry Hadden-Paton as Aldous Huxley and Carmen Cusack as Clare Boothe Luce in ‘Flying Over Sunset’.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

• The New York Times - Opinion: Frank Bruni - December 2, 2021

For the love of sentences:

Here’s Lisa Birnbach on the little-known fact that Clare Boothe Luce was an early and avid consumer of LSD: “The discordancy is so intriguing — like learning that Katharine Graham went to nude encounter sessions at Esalen, or Alan Greenspan was once in a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band.” (Dan Weiller, White Plains, N.Y.)

The Preppy Handbook - Lost pages — The Lost pages - The Official Preppy Handbook

Town and Country - October 13, 2021

T&C & Me: Readers on 175 Years of Town & Country

Celebrate Town & Country’s anniversary through our readers’ stories, from Candice Bergen and Lisa Birnbach to Kevin Kwan.

“When I was about 11 years old I underwent the 20th-century procedure of getting braces applied to my teeth, a process that required a full day out of school in the olden days. The handsome Dr. Boylan had an office in the Fuller Building, on 57th Street and Madison Ave—his reception area looked like a private school’s admissions office. While I was being worked on, I was aware that another kid was getting braces in the other room. Meanwhile, my mother was in the waiting room reading Town & Country—or trying to. Her trouble was that sitting across from her was the mother of the other patient: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. How could she possibly read the magazine? Any magazine? Jackie Kennedy was not just a figure of interest, she was the living image board for millions of women, including my mother and grandmother. They loved her looks. They loved that she lived in their neighborhood. My mother fake-read her Town & Country while Caroline Kennedy and I were turning into metalmouths. Caroline finished first. When they left (and my mother could finally exhale), Dr. Boylan came into the waiting room and said with a twinkle in his eye, “Mrs. Kennedy asked me if you were really Mrs. Birnbach.”

—Lisa Birnbach, journalist and author of The Official Preppy Handbook

The Washington Examiner - September 16, 2021

There goes that pink cotton percale-rolled complete prep lifestyle shirt

“Prep, that assemblage of old-school, WASPy clothing idioms, is back, and as the fashion press have noted, this revival comes at a time when some of the essential preppy outfitters are back on their penny-loafer heels. J. Crew is in bankruptcy; Brooks Brothers was in bankruptcy last year.

B-Squared has a new head designer for men, Michael Bastian….”

“…Bastian has clearly consulted Lisa Birnbach’s Official Preppy Handbook. Birnbach writes, “The classic shirt is the Brooks Brothers all-cotton oxford cloth shirt. Pink is the most famous color, and it is widely supposed that no one except Brooks has ever been able to achieve that perfect pink.” She adds that “one should have the shirt also in yellow, blue, and white.”

Only Brooks Brothers, says Birnbach, has ever achieved “that perfect roll to the collar.” Bastian says that the “perfect” oxford “absolutely must have that precise Brooks Brothers roll to the collar.””

Read the full article HERE

A•C•L - A Continuous Lean Podcast

Host Michael Williams interview Lisa Birnbach about the 40th Anniversary of The Official Preppy Handbook.

Give it a listen! HERE: https://www.acl.news/p/prep

Original photo by Victor Virgile via Getty Images.

Bean’s, But Make It Fashion - by Alexandra Hall

Designer Todd Snyder's L.L.Bean–inspired fall collection drops this month, but it's not the retailer's first foray into high fashion.

1980: Author Lisa Birnbach’s Official Preppy Handbook, satirizing the ascendent yuppie culture, declares Bean’s “nothing less than Prep mecca.” The canonization boosts sales 42 percent and paves the way for preppie imitators like J. Crew and Tommy Hilfiger.

From L.L. Bean’s first runway collection, designed in collaboration with Todd Snyder. - Credit: John Taggart for The New York Times

NY Times - February 5, 2020 - By Guy Trebay

Storming the Catwalk in an L.L. Bean Boot

It was the impregnable fortress of heritage labels. Behind its clapboard walls lay an unlikely grail. Let international designers like Junya Watanabe and Demna Gvasalia have their way with Red Wing, Filson and North Face. Nobody touches L.L. Bean.

Until this week, that is.

“I have to say, I’m shocked,” said Lisa Birnbach, the author of “The Official Preppy Handbook.” That book, which was published in 1980, had the distinction of exporting to a broader culture the sartorial folkways of what was once a wealthy Eastern elite… “I thought putting a shawl collar on the Norwegian sweater was about as far as things could go,”…

Charles M. Schulz with a few of his “Peanuts” characters, including Linus (from left, with blanket) Lucy van Pelt, Charlie Brown and Snoopy.(CBS Photo Archive) — Charles M. Schulz with a few of his “Peanuts” characters, including Linus (from left, with blanket) Lucy van Pelt, Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
(CBS Photo Archive)

LA TIMES - November 7, 2019 - by Patrick J. Kiger

5 writers on how Charlie Brown and the ‘Peanuts’ gang changed their lives

Nearly three dozen novelists, memoirists, cartoonists, critics and journalists describe the influence that Schulz’s daily cartoon about the indignities and joys of suburban childhood had upon their own lives and work.

“Lucy Can’t See”: The coauthor of 1980s pop culture sensation “The Official Preppy Handbook,” who now hosts the “Five Things With Lisa Birnbach” podcast, Lisa Birnbach says she gained much-needed confidence from her experience playing the role of Lucy in her school production of “The Wonderful World of Peanuts.” Birnbach, a timid, self-conscious third grader who wore thick-lensed glasses because of her poor vision, identified more with Charlie Brown. Her teacher, however, chose her for the role of the assertive character whom Birnbach calls “the warrior queen of the ‘Peanuts’ tribe.” (As Birnbach explains, Lucy “was feared. She got her way.”)

NPR Radio - “All Of It” - Hosted by Alison Stewart - November 5, 2019

Celebrating Peanuts - “The Peanuts Papers - Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & The Gang, and the Meaning of Life”

Lisa Birnbach joins host Alison Stewart, David Camp, and anthology editor Andrew Blauner to talk about their new book “The Peanuts Papers”

Click HERE to Listen to the Episode:

https://www.wnyc.org/story/peanuts-papers

NBC NEWS.COM - OCtober 7, 2019

Screw Invisibility': Why middle age is just the beginning

By Halley Bondy

Middle age isn’t the end of a woman’s life and career — it’s a new beginning.That’s one of the core messages of NextTribe, a magazine and lifestyle brand for and by women over 45. The publication features writing from high-profile women, including New York Times columnist Judith Newman and veteran author and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Lisa Birnbach interviews E. Jean at the NextTribe event in NYC.

The New York Times – August 6, 2019

Preppy Handbook & Me

By James Poniewozik

As a kid in the ’80s, I hated the preppy craze. But did I really understand the book that started it?

Photo from Lisa Birnbach’s original article in New York Magazine 1996

SLATE - June 29, 2019 - By Susan Matthews

In 1996, Trump Was Still in on the Joke

E. Jean Carroll’s stunning accusation forced me to remember who the president used to be.

An article about the article written in 1996 by Lisa Birnbach about Trump and Mar A Lago. “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” CLICK HERE: to read the original. NOTE: in this format, you’ll have to scroll to page 30. (look for the photo).

Esquire - June 19, 2019 - By Scott CHRISTIAN

Prep Is Back—But It’s Completely Different Than You Remember

“Certainly if you’ve ever read Lisa Birnbach’s satirical prep manifesto The Official Preppy Handbook, or Bret Easton Ellis’s first two novels, you know that prep’s ‘80s incarnation was dripping with irony and irreverence. And, in a way, that’s one of the key ingredients of this 2019 reinvention.”

“The best illustration of prep’s more-inclusive 21st century resurgence came, for Carlson, courtesy of Rowing Blazers’ first pop-up shop back in 2017. “Our very first customer to come in was Vic Mensa, the rapper. The second person was Chip Kidd, the co-author, along with Lisa Birnbach, of True Prep, the new version of The Official Preppy Handbook.” A hip-hop star and the woman who literally wrote the book on prep, both fawning over the same striped blazer. Sorry Hoyt, but this prep’s no longer just for you.”

VOGUE - June 11, 2019 - BY LILAH RAMZI

Montauk’s Surf Lodge Hosts a Boho Book Party for Julia Chaplin

“When Lisa Birnbach put out The Official Preppy Handbook—a guide that poked fun at pop-collared privilege—in the fall of 1980, she caused quite the splash. The book became an instant hit, perhaps most surprisingly with the very group it mocked. If the handbook was a joke, it seems it was one that everyone was in on and one that lives on in Julia Chaplin’s latest book, The Boho Manifesto, a similar tongue-in-cheek how-to for today’s most easily taunted set: the new-age bohemian.”

CGTN America - March 16, 2019

Lisa Birnbach discusses the US college admissions scandal with John Terrett of CGTV America @cgtnamerica

College Admissions VOCdotcom 2019.jpg.jpeg

Vox.com - March 15, 2019 - By anna North

What the college admissions scandal reveals about the psychology of wealth in America

Lisa Birnbach weighs in about the scandal that could break down misconceptions about money, merit, and status — if Americans are willing to listen.

Considerable.com - January 11, 2019 - by Micheline Maynard

Why we need to revive the lost art of the thank you note. In a world of texts and emails, the human gesture stands out

“I am a strong believer in thank you notes,” says Lisa Birnbach, co-author of True Prep, The Official Preppy Handbook and host of the delightful weekly podcast, Five Things with Lisa Birnbach.

Models line up wearing Lilly Pulitzer. (BFA)

The Evening Standard - November 14, 2018

60 years of Lilly Pulitzer: behind the scenes of an iconic American brand - Celebrating six decades of all-American prep

Birnbach spent time with the real Lilly in 2008 at her Palm Beach home. She met a woman who was “as shocked as anybody that Lilly Pulitzer was meaningful to people.”“She loved the high and low of life,” Birnbach explained. “She wasn’t thinking about being a businesswoman or fashion designer, she was thinking about making a little frock to wear and then her friends admired it. As she told me once, a lot of the fabrics came from the equivalent of a five and dime. They were cotton, they were bright, but they weren’t hand painted or artisanal," Birnbach said.

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., for his confirmation hearing on Sept. 4, 2018.

The Baltimore Sun - September 28, 2018

What Brett Kavanaugh says about the drinking culture of private schools and how it's changed.

Lisa Birnbach’s quote from Jean Marbella’s piece about Prep School culture: “We send our children there because we’re choosing an ethos for our children — that character is fundamental and has to be part of the school,” she said. “You’re sending them their for the small classes, the personal attention, the better academic challenges. But they should also understand what the school stands for.”

FORBES.COM - JULY 22, 2018

Mexican Corn, A Summer Favorite, Moves off the Street and Onto More Menus

Forbes contributor, Micheline Maynard picks up on Lisa Birnbach's new podcast, Five Things That Make Life Better, when searching for their summer favorites. (see Lisa's blog above for link).

Vogue - September 2017

Here’s How Designers Are Reframing the Polo Shirt for Spring 2018

Lisa Birnbach is the inspiration behind the conversation about Polo Shirts 20 years after she propelled them to fame in her bestseller "The Official Preppy Handbook"

Lisa Birnbach ('78) and fellow Brown alumnae: Bess Kalb (’10), Susan Cheever ’65 and Amy Sohn (’95),

BROWN UNIVERSITY - MAY 6, 2017

Write Through This: Authors in the New Normal

Lisa Birnbach (’78) moderator: Panelists included fellow Brown alumnae: Bess Kalb (’10), writer, Jimmy Kimmel Live!; Susan Cheever (’65) author, Drinking in America: Our Secret History; and Amy Sohn (’95), author, Run Catch Kiss.

On May 5 and 6, 2017, more than 700 Brown alumnae returned to campus for the two-day 125 Years of Women at Brown Conference, with attendees ranging from graduating classes in the 1950s through the most recent Class of 2016. During a series of panels, seminars and gatherings with fellow alumnae leaders in the education, public policy, government, technology and nonprofit sectors, conference attendees celebrated the historic moment and examined the evolving role of women at Brown and in the world.

00-BARRY LEVINSON Quote LISA BIRN-3-Li-SO-02.jpg

REMEMBERING ROBIN WILLIAMS - OCTOBER 5, 2016

Lisa Birnbach moderates a conversation about the work of Robin Williams

WITH BARRY LEVINSON, WHOOPI GOLDBERG, BILLY CRYSTAL, BONNIE HUNT AND HANK AZARIA AT THE GRAND OPENING OF THE SAG-AFTRA ROBIN WILLIAMS CENTER.

“Lisa Birnbach was a thoughtful, interesting, and experienced moderator who helped our panel to celebrate both the professional and personal contributions of Robin Williams. She set the table by asking questions that got us going and allowed the conversations to flow effortlessly. She knew when to interject and when to sit back and listen. That's an underappreciated talent.” - BARRY LEVINSON

Photo Credit: Chloe Apple Seldman/ Michael Priest Photography

New York Times - May 2, 2016

LEVERAGING CONTENT AND CELEBRITY FOR CROSS-PLATFORM SUCCESS: BRANDS AND STAR POWER COLLABORATE

Lisa Birnbach joins an esteemed panel of experts to discuss the current state of celebrity involvement with digital content.

New York Observer - January 8, 2016

Preppy Style Has Gone Mainstream Thanks to Vineyard Vines

The hallmarks of preppy dressing are being injected into the everyday wardrobes of those who may not have the storied lineage (and bank accounts) of an iconic preppy family.

The Washington Post - December 7, 2015

Boomers are ready to retire from holiday hubbub - but their kids won't let them.

New York Times - Big City Book Club - November 10, 2015

Ginia Bellafante, the Big City columnist, and Lisa Birnbach, a modern-day chronicler of patrician Manhattan habit and the author of "The Official Preppy Handbook," among other books, held an online discussion about Edith Wharton's "The Custom of the Country." The co-hosts favorite pieces of social criticism, Edith Wharton's "The Custom of the Country."

Click HERE to view the conversation