The Hipster Paradox
The Paradox of Hipster Fashion
Perhaps the most salient aspect of the hipster paradox is hipster fashion. Eighty dollar distressed jeans from Urban Outfitters are paired with two dollar t-shirts from the local thrift shop. To the casual observer, hipster attire is effortlessly assembled—“I wear what I think looks good,” the hipster says. “I don’t care about price.” While this addendum might imply some sort of financial humility, it arguably means just the opposite. The hipster, in pursuing the purely aesthetic, has the privilege of making sartorial decisions without thinking about money. Exploring why the hipster wears what she wears is therefore a study of the financial identity that hipsters wish to convey. This identity is a hybrid result of the hipster’s wish to supersede mainstream monetary sensibilities while simultaneously enjoying the privilege their money provides.
The question of enjoying this privilege was especially salient after the 2008 recession. Overt displays of money were seen as insensitive, to the point that even Michelle Obama made a point of re-wearing a dress to her husband’s second-term inauguration. How, then, could one dress “rich” without being insensitive? The answer to this dilemma was one that perfectly aligned with the hipster aesthetic: By eschewing common status symbols, the hipster could further cement her alternative status while simultaneously crafting a unique style, one that was just idiosyncratic enough that so-called outsiders would not recognize this display of wealth (and here the hipster is allowed to save face by not flaunting privilege) but universal enough that it would become the mark of an in-group.
The Coffee Shop as Social Space
This summer, I made my foray into the curious world of coffee shops. Although I am from Portland, Ore.—the unofficial mecca of independent coffeehouses—I remained skeptical: “Nothing can be as good as my mother’s Turkish coffee,” I thought, with the same stubbornness that led me to eschew store-bought hummus. But one Saturday morning, in the name of exploration, I grabbed my best friend and headed to the most hipster coffee shop I could find. The front of the building was unremarkable, but upon walking in I was immediately surrounded with the aromas of coffee beans and expensive perfume. The walls were a metallic brocade, and the floors were made of warm chocolate wood.
Behind the counter stood an incredibly attractive barista, who grew much less attractive once I asked him what espresso was.
Of Ray-Bans and Retro-Chic
The more retro something is, the more hipsters seem to love it. Macklemore famously summarized this when he rapped, “I wear your granddad’s clothes / I look incredible.” While some items, such as clothing or furniture, serve the same purpose whether they are labeled as vintage or not, others, such as record players and cassette tapes, have undoubtedly been outstripped by modern technology. Yet what it lacks in function the vintage object makes up for in sentiment. For the hipster, this sentiment usually takes the form of nostalgia. Ultimately the appeal of vintage rests on three main principles. First of all, it serves as a channel through which the hipster can explore and redefine her relationship to that past. This suggests a second principle, which is that the newly developed relationship to the past can be used to explore the hipster’s individuality, leading to a form of individual empowerment. And finally, the third cornerstone of vintage’s appeal is its inherent counterpoint to the mainstream, which further serves to define the hipster as both a unique individual and as a member of a unique group.
The redefinition of the hipster’s relationship to the past centers on vintage because it is a tangible representation of a given era. Through relics discovered in thrift shops or in the dusty recesses of her parents’ attic, the hipster can explore the morals, ideas, and values of a time beyond the present. By mining the past for inspiration, the hipster can assert her independence from the commonly available store of thought—the mainstream—which draws mainly upon values of the present. Thus, the vintage ideal is a temporal rebellion as well as a cultural one. However, the hipster does not simply extract inspiration from the past but arguably seeks to immerse herself in it; she carefully crafts an amalgam of the best historical moments and then seeks to redefine herself in relation to them. This exercise of communing with a lost zeitgeist is rarely done without nostalgia. Taken from the Greek word meaning “return home,” nostalgia is characteristic of much of the hipster’s relationship to the past; the present never seems to quite measure up.
Defining the Paradox
During my sophomore year of high school in Portland, Ore., a strange phenomenon took place. Jeans grew tighter, glasses thicker, t-shirts more ironic. Mason jars became the beverage containers de rigueur, and girls and boys alike eschewed shiny blond tresses for unisex haircuts that exuded a deliberately rakish air. “They’re called hipsters,” my sister explained to me. I shrugged, expecting the trend to fizzle out like the rare Oregon sunshine. Instead, it only spread. Those unsavvy to the ways of the thrift store went to Urban Outfitters and bought “vintage” and “distressed” clothing for hundreds of dollars, aspiring to the tastefully retro hipster aesthetic. The entire endeavor was steeped in irony: The intense effort involved in looking effortless, the renunciation of mainstream consumerism (in favor of another, more trendy type of consumerism) and the refusal, at all costs, to admit to being a hipster caused me to view the entire culture as a sort of enigma.
From an anthropological perspective, hipster culture is interesting, not only because of its idiosyncrasies but also because of its utility in the quest to understand how so-called “alternative” cultures define themselves in relation to the mainstream. This is an especially complicated question, since very few hipsters will admit to being members of the movement. I call this the hipster paradox: While the hipster culture defines itself as alternative, this definition rests upon the flimsy principle of being the “anti-mainstream.” Ultimately, this means that the definition of hipster is still dependent upon the mainstream that hipster culture seeks to supersede. Classifying hipsters into a distinct social group becomes especially complicated when one considers the fact that hipster culture is now seen as a subset of the mainstream instead of its antithesis. Gone are the days when thick glasses and year-round flannels were seen as edgy. These trends have been adopted by major retailers such as Forever 21, Nordstrom, and even JCPenney, all seeking to capitalize on the hipster aesthetic. In a Guardian article on this very topic, trend forecaster Chris Sanderson says that the “idea of the hipster has been swallowed by the mainstream.” He elaborates: "The hipster died the minute we called him a hipster. The word no longer had the same meaning."