Lisa Birnbach’s 1980 classic “The Official Preppy Handbook” (pdf copy downloadable for free here) was both a loving ode to and good-natured satire of the WASPy East Coast-centered Preppy subculture. It also served as a time-capsule of that culture at the beginning of the 1980s, just before Birnbach’s book touched off a nationwide phenomenon of emulation, with public school kids everywhere from Des Moines to Houston popping the collars of their crocodile-logoed Izod Lacoste polo shirts and slipping their bare feet into a pair of Sperry Topsider deck shoes on their way out the door to school. In the early 80s, just a couple years into elementary school, I was one of those kids. I lived in the Houston suburbs, raised by parents who were already upper middle class and getting more and more affluent. It was a time to become affluent in Houston, a chaotic zoning-free boomtown that nevertheless had its little bastions of effete preppy culture. Houston’s fortunes have risen and fallen and risen again over the years, and it is still a good place to become and to be affluent. It is not my aim to recreate the sardonic style of Birnbach’s book, at least not initially. This blog is therefore intended as a straight supplement and update to Birnbach’s book, but specific to the ins and outs of being a preppy in Houston.
Unlike most blogs, the Official Houston Preppy Handbook isn’t intended to be read as a series of chronological updates, but more as a reference manual on the prep lifestyle in Houston, past and present. Therefore, instead of starting with the most recent post, I encourage you to start by going to the Table of Contents, and either reading the posts in that order, or by which topics interest you the most.
My Prep Bona Fides:
Okay, so I didn’t go to prep school, I was a public school kid until college, but do have a few claims to Texas-style prepdom. I was always a preppy dresser, from early elementary school, first by my mom’s choice, then by mine as the national preppy fad caught hold in the early 80s. Been wearing Lacoste and Ralph Lauren since the 80s, Brooks Brothers since the early 90s. I also have summered at my family’s bay house on Galveston Island since 1983, where I learned to sail as a preteen, and spent many a summer day out on West Bay by myself in my Catalina Omega. I still sail now, though my current boat is a JY 15. I went to the preppiest college in Texas, Southern Methodist University, was on the sailing team, and was in a fraternity. I now live in the Memorial area of Houston, with my wife, daughter, dachshund, two cats, lots of fish, both a leather and a canvas pair of Sperry deck shoes, and a pair of white bucks.
The Official Houston Preppy Handbook 