In defence of hipsters (2 Viewers)

[therealjohnny]

"Decks of heroin"?...I'm so out of touch

 

[Lili Marlene]

"Decks of heroin"?...I'm so out of touch

I'm more out of touch than you! I don't even know what "of" is.

 

[Jill Hives]

View attachment 7718
I think i am some where around the twee after a mountain man phase posibly heading towrard meta nerd

I'd be somewhere between 2001-2003.

 

[george mcfly]

I'd be somewhere between 2001-2003.

you're definitely a 2003

 

[Jill Hives]

you're definitely a 2003

Nah, more 2001. Converse, hoodies, badges and no gaudy tattoo.

 

[Jim Daniels]

 

[washingcattle]

I don't know who they are more than you don't know who they are.

That was an ironic meh.


I actually wanted to like it but I though hipster of it.

 

[ann post]

All i saw was that the vintage period was the one i fancied except they were all the same girl.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/caught-in-the-hipster-trap.html?_r=0



GAA jerseys and hoodies are all that's left over here. You could probably argue that GAA jerseys can be worn ironically but until an entire tape release gig is full of people wearing them all at once you're probably safe.

WILL NEVER HAPPEN

 

[Lili Marlene]

WILL NEVER HAPPEN

Listen Mr "I'm too good for Soundgarden except that song off their early album back when they were playing small clubs, i like that one".... I dunno, hi.

 

[oh shit]

The reason GAA shirts can't become hip is that they are still worn in earnest by enough people that anyone wearing them is first and foremost presumed to be earnest. Hipsters can only wear styles that the original "owners" have abandoned, otherwise there is no irony.

So you might, maybe, get away with vintage GAA shirts. Some of the early 90s ones were pretty iconic. When Down won the 1991 football they beat a Meath side wearing this classic:

 

[oh shit]

A nice look for all you Dubs with an easy-to-match blue:

 

[oh shit]

And here's the legendary Down man James McCarten in that 1991 final, wearing the anarchist class-war shirt that I always wanted my da to get me:

a strong look for a strong corner forward

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

I'm not quite sure how to feel about this piece in the NYT

DISPATCH
Caught in the Hipster Trap

Mark Pernice and Zhang Qingyun
By STEVEN KURUTZ
Published: September 14, 2013

AFTER resisting for years, I finally gave in and began wearing glasses, mostly when I watch movies or drive (the rest of the time I go around in a tolerable fog). More upsetting than this small sign of physical decay was the acquaintance who took note of my newly bespectacled profile and said that I looked like a hipster. Mind you, the glasses are ordinary brown frames, not retro black. Architects would scoff. Yet I’d been linked to the tattooed, headphone-clad, hirsute rulers of youth culture, and insulted, because anyone who believes he is genuinely cool would never want to be called a hipster, that slavish adopter of trends.

My initial surprise was replaced by a stark realization: as a 30-something skinnyish urban male there’s almost nothing I can wear that won’t make me look like a hipster. Such is the pervasiveness of hipster culture that virtually every aspect of male fashion and grooming has been colonized.

Take footwear. Never mind that it’s largely about comfort. Every time I lace up a pair of Adidas or Vans, I might as well be saying I’m one of those hipsters with a closetful of retro ’80s street wear. Top-Siders paired with an Lacoste shirt are the realm of Vampire Weekend-type preppy hipsters. Any kind of heavy boots smack of up-with-the-working-man proletariat hipsters.

I don’t have a beard or mustache, but if I did, I’d instantly signify as the rugged breed of hipster who stalks the mountains and hollers of Williamsburg and Silver Lake.

For years, I wore a knit cap, starting early in the fall and extending late into spring, because I get chronic sinus headaches made worse by the cold. Now I can’t wear it without looking like the idiotic young-Hollywood hipsters whose wool beanies rest on their tousled heads year-round in sunny California.

Thirty years from now I’ll be able to un-self-consciously wear a cardigan and a tweed cap or fedora, because there is an age limit for being seen as a hipster, but, at the moment, hipsters have geezer style locked up.

Even the basic building blocks of a wardrobe have been hipsterfied. Jeans, especially slim-cut denim, are a hipster essential. So are white T-shirts, leather jackets and hooded sweatshirts. I could wear suits. But they would have to be boxy styles from Men’s Wearhouse, because anything slim or tailored is the province of high-fashion hipsters.

Hipsters have the market cornered on vintage and irony, so I can’t raid the back of my closet for the 20-year-old Smashing Pumpkins concert tee I bought at an actual concert, 20 years ago. Not content with irony, hipsters have also co-opted authentic heritage brands like Woolrich and Gant.

The only way to safely avoid looking like a hipster, so far as I can tell, is to dress in oversize mesh jerseys bearing the logos of sports teams. Or to wear the blandest, baggiest, beige-est clothes possible, like a middle-aged tourist. Oh, wait. My girlfriend read a draft of this story and told me mesh jerseys “are kind of hipster now.” The Rick Steves look is next.

But hipsterification is a fast-moving, all-encompassing beast that goes far beyond urban fashion.

Want to take up a pastime? Cooking, farming, knitting, woodcraft, photography, beekeeping and bicycling are considered hipster hobbies.

Hipsters love their iPhones, yet swoon over antiquated technology like typewriters and record players, so Luddites can’t even stand apart.

Has there ever been a subculture this broadly defined?

Not long ago, I was visiting a big city, walking in what is considered a cool neighborhood, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes and carrying an old 35-millimeter camera. My father’s camera, in fact. I felt like such a trend victim I wanted to stop passers-by and plead, “I’ve used this camera since 1991. Please believe me that I’m not a hipster.”

Or am I?

My friends and I express scorn for the way hipsters try too hard to look cool and continually take on new careers, interests, musical tastes, hairstyles and wardrobes in dilettantish fashion. But underneath it lie uneasy feelings about our own identity and individuality. I live in Brooklyn, work in a creative field, have shelves of vinyl records, dress in vintage and designer labels. So what if I grew up not far from the Woolrich headquarters in rural Pennsylvania? Dining at a locavore restaurant on Smith Street in my buffalo plaid shirt, I’m indistinguishable from everyone else wearing the uniform of the freethinker. If it looks like a hipster, walks like a hipster and quacks like a hipster...

A friend of mine said he used to get embarrassed when a long-cultivated aspect of his personal style became popular with the masses. Now he doesn’t care, secure in his own tastes.

I’m not that evolved. What keeps me going is the belief, deluded though it may be, that there are a few clothing styles or other forms of self-expression that haven’t yet been co-opted by hipster culture. What they are, I’m keeping to myself.

Steven Kurutz is a Home reporter for The New York Times.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I WAS POSTING THAT PIECE IN THIS THREAD BACK WHEN IT WAS STILL COOL.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

He calls himself a 'cool' guy. Whatever the fuck that is. Yet he's borderline obsesses with the opinion of others.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Well yeah but any piece that even hints at using the word 'hipster' is just being written to provoke a reaction. It's the meaningless term that just keeps on giving.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

John, please start a 'In Defense Of Cool Guys' thread.

I want to know if that term is also meaningless. I suspect that it is.

 

[Jill Hives]

Is that all there is to a hipster?
Everything is meaningless.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Is that all there is to a hipster?
Everything is meaningless.