Preppy Handbook 2: Electric Boogaloo

Some Thoughts and Scans From 2nd Magazine's New Preppy Handbook

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After seeing a few posts about 2nd Magazine’s latest edition (volume 197, August 2023) where they look to reboot the preppy handbook for the 2020’s, I decided to see if I could track down a copy of my own.

If you’re unfamiliar, magazines have had a huge stylistic impact on the Japan’s fashion industry. Starting all the way back in post-war Japan with Van Jacket. Van’s founder, Kensuke Ishizu, took great style inspiration from the occupying American military officers, many of whom were ivy league graduates.

Together with Men’s Club Magazine, Ishizu’s Van Jacket began marketing ivy league style to younger audiences, a novelty in the still very conservative (and very conservatively dressed) Japanese epoch.

W. David Marx’s Ametora is a great read and provides some detailed insight into the growth of Japanese fashion.

From there, magazines became a definitive source of style inspiration for the Japanese youth, and to this day, many of these heritage magazine brands continue to exert significant influence.

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Let’s first start with how to go about actually obtaining a copy of the magazine:

Your best bet is going to be eBay for this. It looks like there’s a few different accounts that bulk-import Japanese magazines to the US and then sell them from here. I think most of these options are now sold out, but it might be worth holding out and seeing if any more pop up with shipping from the US.

There’s also a ton of options with shipping from Japan, and. many will ship for free at that. I’m unsure of how long it will take to get past customs and all that, but there are plenty of options for under $30.

I was also pointed toward amazon’s Japanese website, where you can create an account and have stuff shipped over. I think this option may be a bit pricier shipping-wise, so watch out there.

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The Scans

The New Preppy Handbook has a bunch of great features in it, including:

-An overview of Prep

-A piece featuring Rowing Blazers founder Jack Carlson on how preppy he is (no comment)

-The hand-sewn moccasin industry in Maine

-Features of J. Press, Murray’s Toggery Shop, and L. L. Bean’s Freeport HQ

-Features on Brendon Babenzien of Noah/Supreme and Sean Crowley of Crowley Vintage in NYC

I’m gonna try to not get sued here, so I’ll pick out a few of my favorite pages from the magazine and either hope that nobody at 2nd finds my blog, or that they’re cool with this form of exposure if they do.

Also these are actual scans since my attempt at pictures yielded poor results — apologies in advance for the resolution.

very true to the 1980 original

Prep personae!

“If you don’t pass out, you haven’t pulled hard enough“. Too real.

More recent influences from Aimé Leon Dore and the GORPcore movement. Sidenote, those low-cut hikers are so neat

A pilgrimage to Murray’s is a preppy essential

Tate’s cookies: the preppy man’s yum-yum

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Hope you enjoyed! The magazine itself has a ton of great content — this was just a fraction obviously, but it’s spelled out in a way that’s easy to follow even if you don’t read Japanese, and it touches on all of the right points in a pretty concise way.