Would 'hipster' (cough cough) culture seem less obnoxious if it wasn't so knotted up with fashion ideals?

But the participants can't clue you onto how tiny the field of play actually is---lest they scare the demographic they say that they are trying to reach.

Catch-22 almighty.

Adaption
The process by which a consumer or business customer begins to buy and use a new good, service, or an idea

Diffusion
The process by which the use of a product spreads throughout a population

Innovators
The first segment (roughly 2.5 percent) of a population to adopt a new product

Early adopters
Those who adopt an innovation early in the diffusion process but after the innovators

Early majority
Those whose adoption of a new product signals a general acceptance of the innovation

Late majority
The adopters who are willing to try new products when there is little or no risk associated with the purchase, when the purchase becomes and economic necessity, or when there is social pressure to purchase

Laggards
The last consumers to adopt an innovation

hipsters are the early adopters of fashion/music/lit/etc.

But I think Suzy is right when she talks about hipsters being at the forefront of the herd and snubbing people who aren't keeping up with them in the latest musical/film/fashion fad. And that pretty much captures what I don't like about the concept of hipsterism: it's like being back in high school and the hypercool crowd is rolling its eyes at you because you're incurably gauche. You can try to catch up with what they are into, but odds are they've gone on to something else and are laughing at you because you've just gotten into something that's so last month.

Interesting, as I tend to associate hipsters (and hipsterism) not with what's 'cool,' but with trying to be cool. Eternally one step behind the actual trendsetters/creative types, playing catchup.

Didn't hipster start out as a derogatory term? Someone who wasn't 'cool' but tried to adopt the music/fashion/culture that would elevate their status? (Lewis MacAdam's "Birth of the Cool" touched on this, but that was a completely forgettable book.)

And when he does his little rounds,
'Round the boutiques of London Town,
Eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends,
'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion.

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is).
There's one thing that he loves and that is flattery.
One week he's in polka-dots, the next week he is in stripes.
'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion.

They seek him here, they seek him there,
In Regent Street and Leicester Square.
Everywhere the Carnabetian army marches on,
Each one an dedicated follower of fashion.

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is).
His world is built 'round discoteques and parties.
This pleasure-seeking individual always looks his best
'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion.

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is).
He flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly.
In matters of the cloth he is as fickle as can be,
'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion.
He's a dedicated follower of fashion.
He's a dedicated follower of fashion.

This is to say that "fashion" in the canonical sense is not equal simply to "clothes." Rather, as someone very accurately pointed out on the I Hate This Generation thread, the hipster ethos may be "Buy this if you are cool enough to find it" whereas establishment fashion magazines may say "Buy this if you are rich enough to afford this and thin enough to wear this."

Every few years a commercial designer copies aspects of underground style. In the 1980s it was Stephen Sprouse. In the 1990s it was Perry Ellis. Recently it has been Marc Jacobs. Some of his stuff is quite cute but when he copies blatantly from iconic hipster items such as the nylon thrift-shop-inspired ski jacket this winter, it's a bore.

(fwiw I thought the do's from around the time of the first vice throwdown were very congratulatory, even boyishly giddy in its sense of democratic found fashions [tho I use 'boyishly' pointedly because it was less so wrt women])

Those are the innovators, hipsters are early adopters.

In an ideal situation you've got a scene like G--ff describes in Minneapolis or Nick describes in Berlin, where it's cheap to thrift and rent and the people involved in creative stuff aren't quite so competitive or cliquey.

Suzy, the Fashion or Edgy Style or whatever you want to call it World has ALWAYS been like that. It's high school all over again for the kids who weren't in the in-crowd the first time round. Why would anyone want to participate in that?

I'm very happy with my suit. HSA reckons it makes me look fierce and domineering. Ha ha.

I think it's a bit glib to say hipsterism is the revenge of the nerds, which is what Kate seems to be claiming. I'm in those circles and I'm not a bully, nor do I ape the behaviour of evil cliquey girls I went to school with (although I do run a good line in bons mots). Let's blame my conscience. I've never wanted to conform to that kind of hivemind and I get incredibly alarmed by the conspicuous consumption thing. I'm more 'look at the design-porn I found for FIVE DOLLARS, yay me' because I don't necessarily value something because it's expensive. Also a lot of people I work with would be completely flummoxed if they had to scare up an outfit for twenty pounds, the same people who would have been able to do this five years ago, even.

(New job OK, K?)

So much of hipsterism is compensation for adolescent grievances. It's you yourself that pointed out how hipster kids dress like the people that beat them up in high school. It is role reversal.

I'm NOT surprised that your colleagues have fallen prey to conspicuous consumption. Fashion itself is a product of conspicuous consumption. I'm surprised it took them SO LONG - if indeed, as you say, they haven't been like that all along, but only now have the wherewithall to actually aquire their objects of desire. Perhaps this is the change you notice? Not that they or their philosophy has changed, but that their earning power has increased to be able to compete.

Competitiveness is fundamentally the same, whether it's "I'm higher status because I'm more 'creative'" or "I'm higher status because I can afford more." It's the competativeness and the status seeking that is dud.

The Theory Of The Leisure Class.

Go on, then! What are you waiting for?

For fashion, see especially Chapter Seven: Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture.

I dunno, there's always a tipping point with fashion types where they change from 'stylish person' to 'fashion type'.

I'm not making criticisms of you, I'm pointing out that you might just be in the wrong industry.

Anyway... what about Weblen/Veblen?

Kate, I'm totally in agreement with your points; they're something cliques do, or rank-and-file parts of scenes do. I'm not part of either a clique within the fashion industry, nor am I the rank-and-file (and remember, the way things might look is always deceptive; I consider myself someone who's nice to everyone, even those the clique may not favour). What I *have* been saying is that when 'stuff' matters more than 'ideas' (eg. when you get called a hata for questioning someone with a lot of 'stuff', when it's plain you don't like what passes for their 'ideas') things have to change. Or maybe that mindset I don't like (which Nick calls 'aspiring to riches or fame purely to be an asshole', which is Heat-mag land in a nutshell) is about to go out of fashion. I just consider myself ahead or beyond this particular curve because I find it soooo childish.

I've never understood how or why people can view something as superficial as clothing into the whole essence of WHAT THEY ARE... or indeed why they'd want to. This is partly why I feel that people whining on about discrimination on the basis of their choice of clothing or haircut as being tantamount to racism or homophobia is an insult to those who have actually experienced racism or homophobia - I mean, get a sense of fucking perspective people.

*This is not a dig at Suzy, incidentally, I realise you're coming from a different angle here.

Matt, they care bigstyle and in the current climate they want you to know they care (and they are wrong). The refuseniks in my office don't call the magazine Body Fascist Monthly for nothing, and find it tres amusant that the editor's trouty enough to fail her own criteria for who can appear within.

Anyway most of my favourite clothes are now very old heirloom pieces from my (late) aunt or granny, and all of them have good backstory, which is why I like them.

It astonishes me that people get upset and go all "Oh, I thought that the Style world was supposed to be about art and creativity and self expression and all, but really it's just about status and money and bloody FASHION!!!"

But then by the same token, even though I *knew* in advance, it was still a shock to me that I thought the music industry would be at least a LITTLE bit about art and creativity and self expression and all, when really it was about status and money and bloody fashion.

But, armed with that foreknowledge and experience, it's not a shock to me that the art world is like that, as well.

Most people suck. Most people are just apes, concerned with status, and all their conspicuous consupmtion are just chest-banging displays. Maybe I'm one, too, maybe I aspire to be something else, but you know what? Maybe I'm just lying to myself.

I would never say it is tantamount to racism or homophobia, and I can't envisage a situation where someone is discriminated against as a result of their clothes or haircut, except as regards dress codes in employment etc.

I do disagree with the first part of the sentence, I don't dress particularly unusually or anything, but I found it extremely difficult to confidentally go about my day in office attire for the summer. I am fairly certain I worked harder and better and was more helpful on the phone on Fridays when it was casual day.

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of choosing this either Matt, I just think as Tom implies, it's a horses for courses thing. Maybe just self consciousness.

Fashion's double meaning is confusing us. There is fashion, as in clothes and couture and style and What You Wear. And there is fashion, as in trends, cycles, waves of cultural change and/or memes.

The whole idea, implicit in being a Hipster (despite the perception of hipsters being defined by What They Wear) is the latter definition. Sure, you may be able to *spot* Hipsters by what they are wearing, but that changes from culture to culture and time to time.

A hipster is defined by someone who is constantly trying to be ahead of a Trend (I use this word rather than fashion to avoid people thinking I am talking solely about clothes or dress), on the cutting edge of a trend, in order to achieve status - or, in modern terms, to "look cool".

Implicit in this is the idea that there is a trend in the first place to buck or be ahead of. Trends, crazes, fashion - these are all just glaring examples of conspicuous consumption, BY THEIR VERY NATURE. Trying to be hip - even if you are trying to be an innovator rather than an early adaptor - is still feeding off and feeding that trend.

And trends are about commodities, they are about consumption, there are about STUFF. The idea that you can dismiss something as "so last week" so render it useless - not because it is broken or non-functional, but because of something totally arbitrary - how is that really different from burning blankets to prove your status within the tribe? It is a different way of proving your affluence.

And even when you start talking about "Oh, style is about IDEAS, not about STUFF" - Jesus. Read the latter chapters of Veblen. Leisure time in itself is a commodity and proof of your affluence - you have the time to sit around aquiring these IDEAS, aquiring TASTE and STYLE and cultivating all those wonderful notions which serve no useful purpose. The ultimate luxury is LEISURE. Taste - and the leisure and education with which you aquire it - is as much of a conspicuous consumption status symbol as the consumer goods STUFF. It's just in an even more rarified state, further removed from the dirt of usefulness.

Anyway. I'm shouting about something I'm guilty of myself, really.

Having money is a luxury, yes. But having leisure and having the luxury to NOT CARE ABOUT money is even MORE of a luxury.

Kate is otm about taste = leisure = luxury, which is why I found everything Momus blathering on about "style" and somehow equating the tolerance towards it with the issue of racial tolerance/oppression so outrageous. Even in the context of that discussion it was too much

Is that what the Generation thread is about? Like I said, I can't even open it, let alone read it.

But it does irritate me when people who are so CONSUMED with the idea of their Style get uppity about those who are consumed by commodities - they are two sides of the same bloody coin!

(And FWIW, the hatred usually seems to flow only one way- those with "Style" status but without Commodity status hating those with Commodity status.)

Well the goal of discrimination is to do so based on personality, so I don't see why not. "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" is discrimination as well, just a socially acceptable one. Er, depending on the society.

Depending on the person as well (as you say). I have a coat that's in need of a wash/an open flame, but I haven't got around to it, and the last few times I've worn it out, I've been perversely happy to be wearing a minging coat to a fancy(ish) restaurant.

Maybe money can't buy self expression or creativity or sheer talent. But money can buy people who *do* have those talents, so in the end, the status result is the same.

Culture is a joke that the hungry talented play on the gullible rich. Of course they hate each other.

But at the same time Kate the good things are identical too - the Fall Fashion thread is notable (or was when I last looked, who knows what cattiness might have overtaken it) for its glee and enthusiasm, not for any backbiting or chest-beating. It's sort of like what happens when a record comes along like most of ILM like, or someone starts a "Best Albums of the year" thread.

A good example but the sometimes problematic corollary -- yes this is my bete noire coming to the fore again, do not be surprised -- is the feeling of enforced participation in those kinds of threads or reactions, at least in this specific context. It's correct that here is a much better way to go about the subject than most when it comes to ye olde music love, at the same time it operates on so focused a hothouse level that it's overwhelming.

why is the obnoxiousness a problem when the fashion barriers mark out a zone that produces crap anyway? isn't that sort of useful? (from waaay upthread note that I do NOT think that the 'scene' here in mpls is ideal in any way, it's a late echo of wlmsbrg if anything, and the small size means that there is NO competition, no blood drawn, everybody has no choice but to approve of anyone else's band or film, allowing any & all wretched shit a free pass [see anthony's local scenes suck thread].) (also note that i'm drunk at present [see applause thread]).

http://catandgirl.com/view.cgi?151

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If the new fashion thing is shoulder pets, esp. dogs, then I'm in.

one week you're in, and the next...

project euthanasia

When did "fashionista" and "hipster" completely merge? and why is one term used and the other not any more?

These peoples' clothes are ugly, therefore they are hipsters.

I will fight the guy with the orange shirt on the tracks. Fight him now.

You just want someone to slap at you and whine "Stop! Stop! Knock it off!", don't you? Well, that's what little brothers are for.

i like all of those clothes with a passion. you can still love me though :D

The new thing is shoulder pads on dogs

These peoples' clothes are ugly, therefore they are hipsters.

-- Abbott, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 7:00 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

They're from an article about Bushwick:

http://razorapple.com/2008/07/22/bushwicks-paper-chase/

it's reading about hipsters that i can't stand. i can look at pictures and love the clothes, but i cannot

read

about them.

hasn't this word had its day in the sun?

srsly

Yes, since a quick google search revealed Target is "the hipster Wal-Mart."

I thought that was Buy-N-Large.

NO wal-mart is the hipster target, for real.

goodwill is the hipster walmart
independent, boutiquey 2nd hand stores are the hipster target

The new thing is shoulder pads on are dogs