Now that everyone is making fun of their checked shirts, their fixed-gear bikes, their kale chips and full beards, you would think that hipsters are on their way out. Yet they seem more ubiquitous than ever.
And not just at home either. Their lifestyle and fashions now extend way beyond the borders of the places they originated in (New York’s Brooklyn, the 3rd Arrondissement in Paris, Shoreditch in London, Berlin’s Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg, and Södermalm in Stockholm). This autumn they have set up shop on Paris’s Left Bank.
On the edge of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, last bastion of the Paris intellectual, Le Bon Marché department store – a beacon for the bourgeoisie since it opened in 1852 – is showcasing the culture of Brooklyn, the New York borough that, if it were a city, would be the fifth most populous in the US. On the rue de Sèvres these days, you can get a tattoo, buy a vegetable-tanned leather bag, or nibble on a brookie, a cross between a brownie and cookie.
For most of the 20th century, Brooklyn was working-class. Movie directors Woody Allen and Spike Lee grew up there; so did rapper Jay-Z. In the 1990s, a better-heeled class started moving in, fleeing the high rents of Manhattan, and after that the borough became the destination of choice for young nonconformists and artists.
This is what Le Bon Marché has seized on: the emergence of hipsters not as a fashion trend but as a social phenomenon. “They’re urban bohemians who help each other out, who have this desire to produce and consume in an alternative way,” says Lisa Attia, the store’s commercial director, explaining the idea behind the Brooklyn Rive Gauche theme. “Our clientele is looking for authenticity, for creative people who are dedicated to their work, for meaningful stories.”
The term “hipster” was coined in the jazz age of the 1940s, a catch-all for trendily dressed young people. Today’s hipsters are a particular type of nonconformist. Truly “hip” people now tend to be entrepreneurs, buying and selling local products and running micro-businesses. And it is Brooklyn where these organic-minded foodies and savvy techies feel at home. “A real community has emerged, people who want to unplug from a hyperconnected, dehumanised world, artists and others who don’t fit into the classic American definition of success,” say Daniel and Brenna Lewis, founders of Brooklyn Tailors, a business they started in their apartment in 2007. They now sell around the world, most notably at Barneys New York, the luxury retail chain, and is among the 150 companies featured at Le Bon Marché. Others include Fishs Eddy dishes (modelled on the Arts and Crafts movement), Coral & Tusk embroidered linens (inspired by Native American art) and Save Khaki sportswear (designed for the outdoorsy, no-frills kind of guy). Almost all are locally made, artisanally crafted and clearly labelled.
The hipster lifestyle is fertile ground for alternative businesses, and most manage to hold on to their start-up ideals while embracing the fundamentals of the free-market economy. “I like nice things, I like being able to have a nice life, it’s not taboo. The art world, which is also run by money, is nowhere near as honest,” says Scott Campbell, an American tattoo artist invited to set up shop at Le Bon Marché. In Brooklyn, he works out of a studio in the Williamsburg neighbourhood, and his clients include Sting, Jennifer Aniston and Marc Jacobs. “Tattooing, just like the alternative culture that hipsters advocate, has gone democratic and today attracts people from all social classes, even the most privileged,” he says.
The real-estate market in Brooklyn tells the tale: today, prices in neighbourhoods such as Dumbo largely outstrip Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side. In Williamsburg, another hip neighbourhood, a new Apple store is being built, while retail boutiques such as J Crew and Sandro share the streetscape with an increasing number of independently run stores. Some big stars are coming to live, too: actors Lena Dunham and Sarah Jessica Parker now call Brooklyn home, with luxury apartments to suit their status.
Hipster culture has become a global commercial and social phenomenon, and some western cities are now living by its rules. For British economist Douglas McWilliams, hipsters have inherited the “golden boy” ethos of the 1990s and updated it with more populist values, ostentation now being seen as in supremely bad taste. “The Ferraris and champagne of yesteryear have been replaced with Tube tickets, bicycles and cappuccinos to go,” says McWilliams. He is a former British government adviser.
In his book, The Flat White Economy, McWilliams sees the phenomenon of the hip young entrepreneur as a central element of the new world economy, whether it be in Shoreditch or Pigalle, Tel Aviv or Lisbon. The success of hipster style comes from the fact that “it isn’t associated with a logo, unlike the bling-bling 90s, and so it can be reproduced at all levels of fashion,” McWilliams says, giving the example of skinny jeans and lumberjack shirts, which are as easy to find at upscale designer shops as they are at a discount outlet. “You show that you’re ‘in’, not by buying something with a logo on it but by your ability to follow the rush for the latest eccentricity.”
This quest for fine-tuned individuality has often been the subject of mockery in the cities where it occurs. In 2012, Berlin started organising the Hipster Olympics, an event that pokes fun at hipster fashion with competitions such as the Cloth Bag Sack Race and the Horn-Rimmed Glasses Throw.
In the UK, Channel 4 ran a TV sitcom called Nathan Barley, satirising the hipsters of Shoreditch. In 2013, the New York Times ran an article, How hipsters ruined Paris, condemning a now- global phenomenon that threatens to lay waste to real neighbourhood cultures. On social networks, there are satirical quizzes that show readers how to distinguish a hipster from a jihadist. One of the most virulent criticisms is summed up by sociologist Pascal Monfort, who teaches fashion and design at Paris’s HEC business school: “Hipster culture,” he says, “created a lifestyle that produces the exact opposite of what it promises: the search for global uniformity instead of local authenticity.”
Nevertheless, say Ismaël Jmili and Ines de Peretti, students at ESMOD fashion school in Paris, hipsters are a market no one can ignore; they say they have even studied the phenomenon in class.
“It’s a commercial reality. And if the in-crowd of the capital are getting tired of it, they should be aware it doesn’t only exist in Paris. It has spread to the provinces, which are more plugged into the trends than ever thanks to the advent of brands like Asos (the UK online fashion retailer). It has also helped change people’s habits: now, even police officers can wear a beard and have tattoos.”
This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde
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