We’ve borrowed from Wellesley Free Library a coveted copy of True Prep, Lisa Birnbach’s 30-years-later follow-up to The Official Preppy Handbook that Mrs. Swellesley acknowledges owning a copy of back in high school. Four copies are listed in the collections at the town of Wellesley’s libraries and all four are out at the time of this writing.
And while I couldn’t bear to read the nearly 250-page tome word for word, I can somewhat definitively state that Wellesley is mentioned surprisingly few times.
The first mention I spotted is on Page 52 in a chapter called “Because We Are Givers” that’s about charities. The Wellesley Hills Junior Women’s Club‘s annual kitchen tour gets a mention here.
Later in the book, on a page titled “Mummy is now a Docent,” we find that a preppy mom “always knew her Art History major from Wellesley [College] would come in handy some day.”
There are many less direct references mighty familiar to Wellesley residents, from a profile of Vineyard Vines preppy clothing (as seen at Wellesley’s E.A Davis store) to a mention of the Second Time Around “vintage” clothing stores, one of which is in Wellesley (though the Wellesley one isn’t mentioned in the book). Plus an endless stream of preppy names, most of which we’ve run across at some point in real life or in party photo galleries.
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