1998 hipsters vs 2008 hipsters

'98 http://images.buzzillions.com/images_products/01/34/686_smarty_cargo_pants_reviews_25742_300.jpg

'08 http://racked.com/2007_06_skinny%20jeans-thumb.jpg

98

http://islandsurf.com/images/products/large/03-619_dkgry_LG.jpg

08

http://holycitystyle.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/mens-vogue.jpg

i wish more 08 hipsters wore simple black Ray-Bans, they're downright dignified compared to the neon Kanye shutter shades you see on the dang kids these days.

http://www.kevchino.com/graffix/releases/UNKLE-Psyence%20Fiction.jpg

http://fuzznut.net/images/covers/justice-cross.jpg

also surely there were more hipsters in Chuck Taylors in '98 than there are today

http://racked.com/2007_06_skinny%20jeans-thumb.jpg
'98

http://www.breakitdownblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/retard_ninja.jpg
'08

I love digging through my old 90s highschool clothes. I think to myself, "why does none of htis shit fit? and what the hell did I use all these pockets for?"

http://images.buzzillions.com/images_products/01/34/686_smarty_cargo_pants_reviews_25742_300.jpg

This was cooler in 1998 than it is now, but I don't remember hipsters specifically rocking cargo pants 10 years ago.

What the hell did they wear in 1998? flared jeans?

wraparound shades were never something worn by hipsters, sorry.

^^yeah i think the very definition of "hipster" circa '98 was refusal to wear cargo pants.

xxpost

so how many year until they'll be wearing those cargo pants and wrap around shades?

can we unban deeznuts for this thread

'98 = white belts

thinking about english james lavelle style hipsters, rly

http://www.bassdivision.com/ekmps/shops/bassdivision/images/skint_records.jpg

http://www.podbean.com/image-logos/22023_logo.jpg

Cargo pants and Oakleys were Bro Gear not hipster stuff.

they became bro gear circa 2001. technoish 98 hipsters were well into all that urban outfitters shit.

if you think my idea of 98 hipsters is wrong, then plz feel free to contribute the correct alternatives.

http://www.canada-photos.com/data/media/1/snowboarding_534.jpg

http://www.endurablegoods.com/misspelledyoth/files/pabst_blue_ribbon.jpg

My image of '98 hipster is tied to bands like the Locust, tight pants, white belts, and vulcan haircuts. Maybe that's a sub-category and/or a little later. I must've missed the snowboarding, techno-listening guys.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.kuglstatter.com/us_uk_flag.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.gormogons.com/2008/08/so-wait.html%3FwidgetType%3DBlogArchive%26widgetId%3DBlogArchive1%26action%3Dtoggle%26dir%3Dclose%26toggle%3DMONTHLY-1217563200000%26toggleopen%3DMONTHLY-1217563200000&h=301&w=445&sz=40&hl=en&start=9&um=1&usg=__JoFqf8y6Wakxnnd58SDT_UvcBSU=&tbnid=_P4dPHMnCieZwM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Damerica%2Buk%2Bflags%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN

Really? Three new hipster threads in one day???

1998

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/lb1998.jpg

2008

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/lb2008.jpg

http://www.toadsweat.com/images/Flags_of_US_UK.svg.png

indicative of end times for the term

i hope

those flags are in the wrong order

blame google

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uo_eC6uZluY/Rm7k1ZZQ4NI/AAAAAAAAALE/GTdaZnCt1CU/s1600/prefuse_collection.jpg

yuppise vs. hipsters who would u blap?

sweet i knew if i rode out raybans long enough they'd make it back

oopps i posted that on the wrong thread
1998 hipster vs 2008 histers who would u blap?

Yuppies more likely not to make vegan breakfast the next morning?

more likely to pay for a cab though

I would blap whichever is hotter.

The non-vegan brek was a PLUS, Byron. I'll take the over-medium AND the cab, thx.

*Real* hipsters understand bacon.

There were no hipsters wearing tight jeans or pants in 1998. None. The white belts didn't come until 2000, maybe late 99 earliest.

'98 was still about cargo, techno, a lil leftover-flannel, listening to Air and talking about how dated the Chemical Bros were

but do you remember the short-lasting single striped-sweater fad of winter '96/'97 ? that should be revived

dickes pants and solid color tees

dickies*

^otm

Oooh... there's a fine idea. I think I'm going to make '08 about remembering how great the Chemical Brothers were. About 40 minutes of it, anyway.

corduroys were also still in

surfer/skater look is always in out here but back then it was all over the street

I have no style memories from 1998 whatsoever. I moved to NYC halfway through and was in no position to notice anything.

(the chemical brothers WERE grebt!)

1998 was peak white belt time.

i guess my idea of late 90s hipsters comes from reading select magazine as a 16 y/o and reading the early nathan barley bits in tvgohome.

2nd hand little league tees

does anyone remember when some non-raver kids started wearing visors in the first half of '99?

i dont remember if there are any ex-ravers on ilx

Yes, wait, I can back up Lindsay: I definitely went to a show at Coney Island High in summer or fall of 1998 and there were white belts and white sunglasses and emo Vulcan haircuts everywhere. So I know it was ON, on like Donkeykong.

but do you remember the short-lasting single striped-sweater fad of winter '96/'97 ? that should be revived

― Vichitravirya_XI, Wednesday, 17 September 2008 22:57

lol i had one of those in 6th form.

yeah i rocked mine in 11th grade with pride

maybe i just didnt notice 1998 white belts. but i had moved to los angeles so i was noticing other things

whoever said dickies OTM. and this shit: http://www.oipolloi.com/oipolloi/gfx-items/1471-300.jpg

I still have one of those shirts, and I thought of wearing it the other day when all the laundry was dirty but it just looked ridiculous.

did la even HAVE hipsters in 1998?

the "can you hear me now" guy is like a 1998 time capsule.

did la even HAVE hipsters in 1998?

of course they did

Haha, single-stripe sweaters became douchewear so quickly that I had forgotten they started as a hipster thing. Same with ring tees, come to think of it.

>did la even HAVE hipsters in 1998?

haha. is there any city more obsessed with looking/being cool?

new yorkers' perceptions of other cities continues to amaze me

The LA version of hipster is known virtually anywhere else in the world as a total asshat.

undebatable. but what are chicagoan hipsters like, other than indie-rock refugees from wisconsin or iowa?

I think you nailed it, pretty much. It's the "let's pretend this is Williamsburg" set.

white belts, white ties, black rimmed "emo" glasses, tight action-slacks style pants, vulcan haircuts = San Diego 1998

actually, which new york hipsters are not asshats? the quiet ones that live in inwood or washington heights and work on mixed media / stucco?

i want the visor to return

this is my mental picture of LA hipsters c. 1998 based on 3 days spent there
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/ilovetowatch/images/mystery.jpg

actually, which new york hipsters are not asshats?

This kinda ties in with what I just wrote, so it's almost not an xpost. New York hipsters set the standard for asshat, also cool, there's no difference unless you live there.

xpost:
There are three levels of cool in Chicago, in ascending order: people who wish it was as cool as NYC, people who know how it's cooler than NYC, and people who don't give a shit.

There were no hipsters wearing tight jeans or pants in 1998. None.

This is kinda wrong. Obviously we're talking different hipster sects, but most of the dudes 'round these parts wearing khaki cargo pants or baggy pants in general were going to Limp Bizkit concerts or Warped Tour.

hhahaha i don't know if Mystery or VH1 Culture etc really intersect with any city's "hipsterism," especially los angeles.

i didn't know chicagoans had such a pervasive / ubiquitous response to how they're defining themselves "against new york" all the time. the way you describe it,the insecurity is pretty deep.

what are those binoculars for, really? so he doesnt miss any possible moment for seduction ?

the insecurity is pretty deep

Depressingly.

Ask Kanye! She don't mess around with stars 'cause they always leave.

i want to see evidence of men wearing tight pants in the 90s. from what i remember carpenter jeans / the ones with pockets got big in '97/98, and leather jackets were making a brief revisit

wait is that a piercing underneath the lip, or just carefully shaped round shaft of hair ?

okay i am done looking at that picture

That's definitely a gold stud in his lip, possibly with some kind of ornate pattern on it. Whether this is better or worse than a teeny tiny soul patch is above my pay grade.

white belts, white ties, black rimmed "emo" glasses, tight action-slacks style pants, vulcan haircuts = San Diego 1998

OH HAI YOU MISSED NATION OF ULYSSES? In 1991?

1998 you had: still cargos but only if genuine military surplus, twisty Levis, Prada sport and anything that resembled it, Burberry before the asshat/sports casual, SHIBUYA FUN TIMES, rocking vintage labels like Courreges, colours like bright orange, fuchsia, red being worn together, skirts still A-line, fishnet tights, vintage dresses over the jeans or the cargo pants.

That Dickies/Sta-prest thing has featured as a Look in every music scene ever since punk came to smaller cities. And was nicked from Mods.

There were no hipsters wearing tight jeans or pants in 1998. None.

That'd have been when I was in college, and the one college friend I specifically recall admiring for his super-skinny trousers is now a member of a medium-successful hipster instrumental-metal band, so ... yeah.

What the hell did they wear in 1998? flared jeans?

My experience is surely skewed by the fact that I lived in the Midwest at the time, and was not particularly tapped in to what was happening on the coasts, but I would suggest here that there was way less "hipsterish" attention to male fashion at that point -- including a lot of remnants of anti-fashion attitudes from earlier in the 90s. I'd suggest that trousers in particular were totally not getting fussed over all that much, but I'd also say that you would see lots of the following on the types you might now consider "hipsters":

- ratty jeans
- work pants like Dickies
- boot-cut corduroy pants
- plaid-type old-man slacks from thrift stores
- the perennial rock-guy black jeans

I think the Dickies might be the real answer there, the core one. The boot-cut corduroy was definitely a thing, at least for Chicago; maybe this was a Midwestern thing but keep in mind this was back in a decade before cheap-and-fast "hip" fashion stores like H&M and Forever21, and so the hipster thing to do was still to get your clothes from thrift stores (kinda; 1998 is getting late in the game), and so you were likely to see men in corduroy trousers and shirts of the various sorts its easy to find pictures of bands like Pavement in:

- old western shirts
- work shirts with someone else's name still on the pocket
- semi-ironic old t-shirts with the names of high-school athletic programs still on them -- I think 1998 is right around the time that chain stores were picking up on that and selling "distressed"-looking t-shirts with random logos and such on them, the kinds that were meant to look like they'd been sitting in someone's basement since the 1980s.

I also think hipsterism at that point was still far more about what kinds of obscure cultural products you dug out of store bins and enjoyed, in a geeky Matt Groening kind of way, and slightly less concerned about how stylish you looked or what kinds of parties you went to; I'm not sure the atmosphere of "hipster" today is exactly equivalent to what it was back then. Again, maybe that's just because I lived in Chicago through the late 90s and have been in New York for most of the 00s -- but I'm not entirely sure that's the crux of it, because every time I've visited Chicago since I moved, I see the same change happening there, too.

http://www.steve.gb.com/images/me/anus.jpg

- work shirts with someone else's name still on the pocket

haha!

OMG totally cross-posted with Suzy on the Dickies, yes, and I also totally meant to mention the army-surplus thing: dude, my second year of college (1996/7) was spent almost entirely in Army boots and a Korean-War jacket and carrying one of those huge Swiss-Army backpacks. Again, the thing was more to shop at vintage/thrift/surplus stores and pretend to circumvent fashion-as-an-industry.

> I think 1998 is right around the time that chain stores were picking up on that and selling "distressed"-looking t-shirts with random logos and such on them, the kinds that were meant to look like they'd been sitting in someone's basement since the 1980s.

Yes - Old Navy was a leader here :)

Surely Urban Outfitters takes that crown! Though in 1998 I think they were still sort of the kind of chain that still seemed moderately hip, at least in Chicago -- i.e., yeah it was a chain, but it was at least the one cool chain. Anyway, they're just now getting over the whole "rack of t-shirts with old random corporate logos / vintage-looking corny state-tourism slogans / ironic random old band or celebrity / etc. etc." thing

I have a journal entry from 1998 about hipster/indie fashion in Chicago that I might have to dig up.

Minneapolis still has enough fine quality vintage that I can randomly pick up Valentino dresses for $20, in 2008.

Nabisco is right about the picking of the weird signifiers on uniforms; I has Boy Scout shirt from Troop 242 of the Northern Lights Brigade, a Massey Ferguson farmer's jacket and a child's gym top for BLOOMSBURY FC; now I apply those same skills to finding vintage designer stuff, see above, started with location of Pucci dress.

Other '98 specials of mine include hipster trousers from places like Joseph, Whisles, APC; square shades (only douches wear Oakleys, ever), BMX trousers worn with fitted black waterproof jacket, CHEONGSAMS.

dickies were pretty standard skater wear all through the 90s, at least in small town mn (as i recall).

what's amazing to me is that, in mpls at least, the western shirt greaser rockabilly whatever style NEVER DIED. it thrives!

i still like dickies and solid color t-shirts

this thread is reminding me that i need to go shopping, very very badly

only douches wear Oakleys, ever

OTM! i got my ass kicked in Jr high for talking shit on some kid for wearing them

oh yeah:

98
http://www.gyroworldwide.com/site_images/urbanoutfitters_LG.jpg

08
http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/3/32431/29_2007/american-apparel.jpg

Dude... both of those places stopped being cool the first time you went in. I don't like dorks with no clue any more than anyone does, but I still feel like there should still be a hint of caché to the word, even as an anachronism. Like, you know, jazz. Those are just awful, awful places.

The word "hipster," I meant.

I like the clothes in American Apparel.

I only buy Chinese.

Hipsters were pretty much Cobain style-worshippers until the myspace generation. I remember going to an Olivia Tremor Control show in 2001 and seeing most everyone in old man thrift store clothes, kinda shit that the outcasts wore in high school. Nowadays hipster culture just reminds me of myspace profile photos. That's it entirely.

I really wanted to put Friendster against Myspace and then realized both are post-2k2. Then I wanted to do Napster vs Bittorrent but Napster came out in 99 so I guess it's disqualified. How about

1998-Chat Rooms
2008-txting

1998 - "emo violence"
2008 - "space disco"

2007 - "blog house"

2002 - "hipsters"

i knew people who shopped at thrift stores for old man clothes in 1988. is time standing still?

people have been doing that salvation army shit since the beatniks, and maybe even before then. nothing has changed. N O TH ING. hipster begets hipster begets hipster. for a time they were called "uranians". sometimes they were called "beatniks" . now they are called hipsters. what word will your children's children have?

tell it stanton

fuck you guys, there were no such hipsters in 1998. we had ravers instead. totally different drugs.

Urantians?

They briefly invaded in '57, but got bored and returned to their distant world when Elvis joined the Army.

Surely Urban Outfitters takes that crown! Though in 1998 I think they were still sort of the kind of chain that still seemed moderately hip, at least in Chicago -- i.e., yeah it was a chain, but it was at least the one cool chain. Anyway, they're just now getting over the whole "rack of t-shirts with old random corporate logos / vintage-looking corny state-tourism slogans / ironic random old band or celebrity / etc. etc." thing

i was in a UO recently and saw an ironic muscular dystrophy shirt for sale. it made me angry!

More zings on this stupid thread please

URANTIA? More LIKE CAN'T STANDTIA.

Maybe I should take this meme to The Church.

I was going to try and be smart and post some text from a what are you wearing forum. Looking at that made me realise there are much worse things than this thread.

I also think hipsterism at that point was still far more about what kinds of obscure cultural products you dug out of store bins and enjoyed, in a geeky Matt Groening kind of way, and slightly less concerned about how stylish you looked or what kinds of parties you went to; I'm not sure the atmosphere of "hipster" today is exactly equivalent to what it was back then. Again, maybe that's just because I lived in Chicago through the late 90s and have been in New York for most of the 00s -- but I'm not entirely sure that's the crux of it, because every time I've visited Chicago since I moved, I see the same change happening there, too.

While it's true that a lot of stuff never really changes, I will vouch for this having some truth to me - not because I was a hipster in '98 but because I admired them by 2000 and this kind of vibe seemed to be in the air among the kids I knew that were hip to the tip. Whoever mentioned photos of Pavement is dead on - the entire 90s indie rock look!

This was true at least through 2002 or so in Athens - and after that it seemed like there was a distinct line between people who had been hipsters in the 90s and continued on that path, being chill, wearing scruffy thrift store whatnot and listening to records...and people who became hipsters in the wake of Pitchfork, electroclash, MySpace etc who had in general more expensive tastes (to my eyes). These people actually went out and bought new clothes but I couldn't name or describe any of it. This might be something as local as certain bars opening and closing but I'm sure it's demographic. As someone who was never actually very cool in any scene it's also easy for me to make flagrant, wrong generalizations, so YMMV.

in ann arbor, we definitely had the white belts and romulan haircuts. the skinny ties thing was there, but yeah, that was a mod holdover.

Most people here have both hair AND clothes.

AS ABOVE
SO BELOW

I have a journal entry from 1998 about hipster/indie fashion in Chicago that I might have to dig up.

so i'm in this thrift shop -- it's called Ragstock, and pushing aside all these t-shirts and fancy silk, polyester golf numbers, i start contemplating postmodernism, this society we live in that has thrift shops, and not just thrift shops run by an old woman in a room next to a barber shop, full of her children's old sweatsuits, but hip thrift shops! self-conscious of what it all means -- with "Lounge Tops" scrawled across a card above a rack, and was it just my imagination, or was there a cartoon martini next to it? that laughs at itself, hanging up the latest Winnipeg Jets or mesh athletic tee. and then me there, judging the shirts, deciding what kind of statement i'd be making with each top. and there's such a fine line, as with indie rockers, between a cool t-shirt and the dorky shit that you would've worn when you were 12 because who the fuck cared? it's the same exact thing. it's a matter of consciousness. do you realize what you're wearing? oh? you do? oh. you're pretty hip, then. if not, then you're the science geeks everyone hates. don't try coming to their defense. that's the point. they're clueless + defenseless. but see, i realized that the shirts that i liked best were the ones i believed in, that i wouldn't buy just to make an ironic statement (Eden Prairie, MN, Community Theatre Presents ... WIZARD OF OZ!) -- (Minnesota, for some reason, was over-represented at this store, everything a Twins t-shirt or an Albert Lea Boy Scout Troop top) -- part of it, i guess, being my fear of being misinterpreted, terribly wary of those who couldn't get the irony, which is precisely why i shouldn't bother, then, because those who are truly hip & ironic are not supposed to care. they do not care. that's the point. that's why they do it. but who am i trying to impress? why should yr clothes only make sense in relation to the outside world's treatment of them? i wanted a t-shirt of something i would champion anyway, something about art or literature or other things you don't find on t-shirts and looking very much not mass-produced, as even some of these supposedly ironic t-shirts were. so ... i mean ... that's another thing. some fashion comes packaged as ironic (corrupted brand names -- FUCKIN' GO NUTS or whatever instead of DUNKIN DONUTS), others become universally-accepted as ironic by virtue of so many indie rockers wearing them, a few of those then reverse the direction and become normal, without any symbolism, for the same reason ... and that's what i was questioning -- was this intended to be hip? if so, i didn't want it. it helped if it was dated, if it was very clearly produced, manufactured in another time. becuz then nobody intended it to be ironic. but then you must consider whether it has since become so. but then you must consider whether it has since become so. and then ask if anyone would -- uh ... -- confuse it for irony, even. think that you were making fun of it. what's your opinion on summer's red 1982 knoxville world's fair t-shirt. not produced as ironic. not an OBVIOUS example of irony -- who would make fun of the World's Fair, in the same way they might make fun of a 1982 pop culture phenomenon? but it's a fine line. does summer actively champion tennessee and world's fairs -- does she have a jones for festivals, big crowds, etc? mmm ... don't know. then think about this --> what if i shop at the gap + j crew and wear khakis and calvin klein tees NOT because that's the standard in america -- but because i realize i'm conscious of how silly it is that there be a standard. by wearing them but being otherwise hip + in the know, i'm just as equally ironic.

(Date: July 9, 1998.)

(I was 20. So sue me.)

(Or 19, rather. Whatever.)

Dude... both of those places stopped being cool the first time you went in. I don't like dorks with no clue any more than anyone does, but I still feel like there should still be a hint of caché to the word, even as an anachronism. Like, you know, jazz. Those are just awful, awful places.

― so glitchy (kenan), Thursday, 18 September 2008 01:08

not displaying a preference here...

in my world - 1998 hipsters were still in "Swingers" aftermath - hawaiian shirts and color-tinted glasses galore

a lot of dudes in l.a. are STILL rocking the swingers look

oh yeah, that and rockabilly or whatever; l.a. pulled its hipster weight.

this thread needs more pictures.

1998:

http://www.plong.com/MusicCatalog%5CM%5CMadonna%20-%20Ray%20Of%20Light%5CMadonna%20-%20Ray%20Of%20Light.jpg

2008:

http://cdn.stereogum.com/img/madonna-hard_candy-leak.jpg

Funny how the dates of these covers should be inverted

jaymc, the Ragstock you mention is a chainette originating in MN and it has been that 'knowing' since about 1980 (they have always maintained a 'dresses for men' section), though for the past 10 years they've had an influx of bad cut-price Hot Topic clothes and verily did shut their amazing warehouse with all the good thrift. Improved exchange rate now means my vintage shopping at home is in the nicer places that'll do you a '20s dress in perfect condition for $60.

It is cheap there because yr Minnesotan is spoiled WRT to choice and also we are stingy about non-booze expenditure.

Haha, Jay your journal entry is classic 1998/20-year-old-dude

That first pic is so not a hipster but some douchebag who loved to listen to Guano Apes and skiboarding or whatevs. So not a hipster.

Urban Outfitters. I'm not the bitch with the biggest bum - and def not in 1998 - but my behind failed to fit in UO cargo pants. :-( I felt fat and was about 125 pounds.

I think current hipsters are very cute. Some jeans (on boys) are way too tight but overall I really like the style these days.

I like 68 88 08 hipsters and non hipsters better than 78 98 hipsters and nonhipsters

To gain insight into the 1998 hipster, all you have to do is read this: http://suck.com/

98: Cox
08: P@reene

:( :( :(

- work shirts with someone else's name still on the pocket

Mine says "Chuck". I love it.

Embarrassingly, I had a work shirt with a Reverend Horton Heat logo on the back. Don't remember the name on the patch. Has since been given to Goodwill.

but do you remember the short-lasting single striped-sweater fad of winter '96/'97 ? that should be revived

― Vichitravirya_XI, Wednesday, September 17, 2008 5:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Haha, my sister and I used to refer to these as "unique sweaters."

What the hell is a single stripe sweater again?

bit self explanatory

sorry

its sweater bearing a single, horizontal stripe across the chest

Like That 70s Show kinda thing?

I was in highschool for all this. The only stuff I remember being considered "cool" was the LES, Stereolab, and the Boredoms.

i was in high school too. there were loads of single stripe sweaters around! i never considered them cool though. EVERYone had them

i mean it was only as cool as walmart is cool

does anyone remember the single strip sweater lou barlow was wearing in the folk implosion video for "natural one"? i had the same sweater, it was from delia's catalogue!

haha yes i do remember

blue with green?

yep! DELIA'S

i'm having trouble picturing 1998 hipsters because i was finishing up high school and in a metal band at the time.

(but i'm thinking dudes and chicks trying to look like rivers cuomo)

im pretty sure "indie" guys which I guess are hipsters were wearing tight jeans in the late 80s

1998 emo kids vs. 2008 emo kids

Rites of Spring v. Taking Back Sunday

emo dudes always wore tight pants

I had no idea wtf emo was then, and now that I have a vague idea what it was then I have no idea what it is now

Hot Water Music v. Fall Out Boy

what were 1988 hipsters like?

why are testosterone-lacking emos & indies always wearing tight pants then - because they feel inadequate about their tepid masculinity? a symbolic form of self-castration? tight pants in the 90s just looked out of place regardless of subculture, when hip-hop aesthetics made it cool to go baggy

>a lot of dudes in l.a. are STILL rocking the swingers look

um, those aren't hipsters

1998 was such an annoying time in general. barenaked ladies? fatboy slim? the self-important condescension of lauryn hill? a terrible time to be young

the worst was that new radicals asshole/song. god i wanted to slice my ears off

but there was a lot of LSD still around so it wasn't all that bad

A lot of challops around as well

I don't think I was taking in much popular culture in 1998. I had only heard the Smiths two years before, and I was adjusting from small town religious college to NYC. Have only sporadic memories of "white belt" jokes and feeling terribly out of place.

i guess i thought hipster was meant to refer to hip people

I was talking to a bloke in the pub the other day who reckoned he could still get LSD. Bastard wouldn't get me any though.

lol @ people who act like youre crazy when you say it is hard to get lsd now

yeah i always figured 21st century hipsterism was an outgrowth of emo/hardcore/straightedge culture in the late 90s. i remember going to house shows where the cultural elite were all wearing tight pants/black-and-white/etc. just like they are now.

Here's what wiki says:

1990s and 2000s

In the 1990s, the term became a blanket description for middle class young people associated with alternative culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock, independent film and a lifestyle revolving around thrift store shopping, eating organic, locally grown, vegetarian, and/or vegan food, drinking local or brewing beer, listening to public radio, riding bicycles, and magazines like Vice and Clash and website Pitchfork Media.[5]

Robert Lanham's satirical The Hipster Handbook described hipsters as young people with "...mop-top haircuts, swinging retro pocketbooks, talking on cell phones, smoking European cigarettes, ... strutting in platform shoes with a biography of Che Guevara sticking out of their bags."[6]

Hipsters are considered apathetic, pretentious, and self-entitled by other, often marginalized sectors of society they live amongst, including previous generations of bohemian and/or "counter-culture" artists and thinkers as well as poor neighborhoods of color.[5]

In 2005, Slate writer Brandon Stosuy noted that "Heavy metal has recently conquered a new frontier, making an unexpected crossover into the realm of hipsterdom." He argues that the "current revival seems to be a natural mutation from the hipster fascination with post-punk, noise, and no wave,” which allowed even the “nerdiest indie kids to dip their toes into jagged, autistic sounds.” He argues that a "byproduct" of this development was an "...investigation of a musical culture that many had previously feared or fetishized from afar.”[7]

In 2008, Utne Reader magazine writer Jake Mohan described “hipster rap,” “as loosely defined by the Chicago Reader, consists of the most recent crop of MCs and DJs who flout conventional hip-hop fashions, eschewing baggy clothes and gold chains for tight jeans, big sunglasses, the occasional keffiyeh, and other trappings of the hipster lifestyle.” He notes that the “old-school hip-hop website Unkut, and Jersey City rapper Mazzi” have criticized mainstream rappers who they deem to be poseurs or “…fags for copping the metrosexual appearances of hipster fashion.”[8] Prefix Mag writer Ethan Stanislawski argues that there are racial elements to the rise of hipster rap. He claims that there "...have been a slew of angry retorts to the rise of hipster rap," which he says can be summed up as "white kids want the funky otherness of hip-hop... without all the scary black people."[9]

The hipster aesthetic of irony extends to the appropriation of elements of lowbrow or working class identity in an ironic fashion, such as Pabst Blue Ribbon beer as well as the multi coloured keffiyeh "initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory".[5]

In his article for The New York Times, "Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat," Allen Salkin explores the experiences of two hipsters who moved to Tivoli, New York to work on an organic farm. Those without access to farmland are growing vegetables in their backyards and patios. Hipsters are gathering at the local food co-op to exchange seeds and ideas while gaining an identity with a greater sense of irony.[10]

i agree; think the internet napster/slsk/torrent music boom has a lot to do with all of this

any multi-paragraph hipster analysis = tl;dr

the whole "hipster movement" now is basically just the old hardcore scenes grown up. Same style, same cliqueyness, same sense of humor. same people.

same burt

I ate a bean burrito for breakfast. I'm about to have my own hipster movement.

like it was really tough for nerdy indie kids to "dip their toes into autistic sounds" before

I agree with the idea that late-90s emo & hardcore have had a big effect on young "hipster" fashion and style in the 00s. I think basically by the end of the 90s the sort of indie anti-fashion group was getting a little older, and you had ... well, more hardcore scenes on the coasts (like San Diego white-belt Romulans), and the development of a midwestern white-belt "emo" style that was like indie-rock's kid brother/sister (in a Promise Ring / chunky glasses / "we looking through the record collection of our older sibling Indie and concluded that Pinkerton was the best thing in it" way). Those things have definitely had a whole lot of visual impact on what we consider hipsterdom, although as you look at younger and younger people a lot of these things become suburban-mall chain-store stuff (Hot Topic, etc.) and don't seem particularly grown-up hip.

Another bit turnaround, so far as I can see = the moment around 2000 where hipsterdom became more party-focused -- i.e., the moment where everyone started saying hipsterdom was staid and boring, and you had electro(-clash) and a lot more fashion and a lot more dance music and midwestern rock guys went eww eww eww for a while but eventually they lost; back around 2001 (in Chicago, anyway) if you were seeing skinny pants and Vans on anyone it was probably a full on electroclasher type, but in a few years that'd be just everyone. So -- and we were talking about this on some thread the other day -- you could easily trace the point where store racks that used to contain fake-vintage distressed t-shirts suddenly had shiny new neon print t-shirts all over them, and this sort of hipster-trash basement-party bright-and-fashiony chic started coming from more and more places: indie rock, hip-hop fashion ... all of this at first under the rubric of being kind of "80s" and self-consciously "fun," but then soon enough just being what it is, now. You could also note the upswing of more fashiony stuff in popular rock, with new pop-emo bands suddenly looking a little gothed out or wearing suits and eyeliner and whatnot, stuff that was surely a bit of reaction or liberation from the anti-fashion feelings of even the late 90s, which were still alt/GenX enough that dudes who weren't club kids or ravers would probably have a hard time wearing makeup without getting a lot of "oh christ stop trying so hard." You were meant to look like you didn't care that much, obviously.

Which is the other thing, though, the big difference between then and now, which we've kinda discussed, but ... no matter how much anyone here wants to say that oh, it's always the same shit, nothing changes, I don't think I'll ever stop perceiving that the very category of hipsterdom grew significantly in its purchase somewhere around the start of the millennium, and became much more flashy and fashiony and of note to a whole lot more people. I think this was largely internet-assisted, too, insofar as people suddenly had access to so much music and pictorial evidence of fashion and so on, and the center of hip attention shifted significantly back in New York's direction, and you had people arguing style more on message boards (and not just with the people immediately around them in their towns), and you could look at blogs that made basically a part-time job of documenting what was allegedly hip, and ... how could this not laser people's attention in on this kind of consumption? For better or worse. Nobody I knew was going on a shitload about hipsterdom in the late 90s; it was just ... you know, artists, indie-rockers, people who were into stuff. The hipster category has totally metastasized over the decade since. Burt's right to point out that there's always historically been some category of hipsterdom, that even the word itself goes back for decades, but he totally leaves out the gaps between his examples, which is exactly the point -- he leaves out the way that category periodically reconfigures itself or grows self-conscious and tries to submerge itself, or whatever. We can all trace a kind of hipsterdom to some explosion-point in the 60s, obviously, and we can talk about definite forms of hipsterdom in the 80s (say, that sort of New York art-scene hip), but we're kind of missing the point if we don't try to sort out, e.g., what reconfiguring what going on the 70s, the way hip was surely much more diffuse and worked in different streams and types and was ... moving from one place to another, you know?

holy shit

i didnt read that but its otm

I did and it's OTM.

Oh crap P.S. everyone HERE is a great big mid-to-late-90s hip fashion thing we have totally forgotten, and it wasn't just ravers nosiree: SHIRTS WITH RACING STRIPES. Internet is kinda selectively down over here so I can't find a picture of one of the Split shirts I wore all the time early in college, but maybe one of y'all can.

any multi-paragraph hipster analysis = tl;dr

― A bold plan drawn up by assholes to screw morons (dan m), Thursday, September 18, 2008 4:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

People who like to go see bands play at night wear unusual clothes.

Or really: shirts with racing strips, ringer t-shirts (both often long-sleeve), baseball-style shirts with three-quarter sleeves, and shirts like this one:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/5/8649709_9b0d439836.jpg?v=0

Which is pictured on Graham Coxon because I seem to remember him and Damon Albarn both wearing loads of said type of pretty mid-to-late-90s shirt

dude people have been wearing shirts like that as long as those kinds of shirts have been around which is basically since like 1975.

Argh "people" have been wearing EVERYTHING ever since it was invented -- we're talking about moments when specific items seemed to have some purchase among those we're considering "hipsters"

Answer to original question: I would prefer 1998 hipsters because that's 10 fewer hipsters.

http://www.billrotelladrumbeatings.com/rimshot.gif

and i would arugue that the word "hipster" here means "someone who goes to shows at night"

P.S. A lot of 90s hip-type fashions were staples in the late 70s, because a whole lot of GenXers went to a whole lot of thrift shops and basically just dressed in stuff from when they were kids, much of which we've mentioned -- dusty-colored corduroy flares, western shirts, three-quarter-sleeve baseball shirts, iron-on t-shirts with late-70s kid-culture detritus -- and then people started selling new versions of those things

P.S. No shit

someone give this man a phd

Whole thing feels like a pretty US-centric narrative. 1998 felt like the winding down of dance music as a 90s-defining thing (see the pants at the top). The whole 70s / ironic Tshirt indie thing was more marginal, and felt like a '93 type thing. Disagree entirely that 08 hipsters are more of a part scene: more conscious fashion, but less drugs, less mayhem.

the ironic, secondhand t-shirt: indie staple for nearly 20 years. It is as specific to 1998 as boot-cut jeans and Converse.

nearly twenty years? so you mean, since... the 90's?

Since '92 for me, at least. And I have to imagine the cultural weather that brought the trend to my relatively small Michigan hometown started earlier, elsewhere.

O wait, that was a zing. I get it. s' cool bro.

when did this shit start?

http://www.myclubbing.net/uploads/events/1173910732hed-kandi-launch-party.jpg

http://weblogs.cltv.com/entertainment/tv/metromix/SNF.jpg

The elephant in the room

xpost

what wrong with hedkandi?

I guess but I mean the cartoon super model raver chick art.

http://commercial-archive.com/d138bfd7bb6f0663dcc71c6b82557c00/b/playboy.jpg

kinda reminds me of this.

I'm more concerned about the one who's missing a nose. What kind of message is that to send to teenagers?

"Turn your contrast down?"

Hed Kandi Graphic Design is so awful

"Coke will ruin your septum"

i'm pretty sure i was a hipster in 1998 (i was 23, going to tons of shows) and i dressed pretty much like classic period shirley feeney. dresses for the important occasions, tight sweaters and lots of handbags and accessories. nothing was new and when i went out no one was wearing the same thing i was wearing. (people were dressed similarly sometimes, but i would have been horrified if someone had been wearing the same outfit...but that wouldn't have happened because all of my clothes were secondhand)

more like this
http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/laverneandshirley.jpg

sort of like this but less cheez
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51l-crB%2BBFL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

in the winter
http://images.zap2it.com/20070511/laverneandshirley_240.jpg

that episode of the OC

It is as specific to 1998 as boot-cut jeans and Converse.

Dude, if you think any of us are hoping or attempting to specify hip trends that existed solely during the year 1998 and then vanished between Christmas and New Year's, you vastly overestimate our ambition

Dear ILX,

I formally apologize for having my head up my ass. I swear I'm not a moron, just a space case. Thank you for your continued tolerance of my over-obvious observations.

your friend,

pbx

you vastly overestimate our ambition

And our long-term memory.

i was 13 in 1998 and i was wearing "husky" jeans

so i think we can eliminate those as hip

I would go with 1998 hipsters, because 2008 hipsters are hipsters right now, while many 1998 hipsters have moved on to better lives.

You know, it's the same exact people ... yes, they're in their 30s and still doing this shit.

You have to forgive him, there are parts of Brooklyn that actually do have this Children of Men quality where you can make yourself forget that live human births occurred after 1986 and before 2003

i was 13 in 1998 and i was wearing "husky" jeans

― THE GAMBLER (max), Thursday, September 18, 2008 2:35 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was 15, ditto

the reason ppl can afford fashion now is that no one has to pay for cds

fuckin $20 albums

Actually I take that back, his neighborhood at night always leaves me plenty aware that kids born after 1986 now think they deserve more bar space than me

deej makes a good point
i spent a lot of money on music and long distance phone calls in 1998
less on my clothes

Hed Kandi Graphic Design is so awful awesome

― I know, right?, Thursday, September 18, 2008 2:16 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha deej otm.

it's true tho, i always used to wonder how my true-blue indie rock loving friends managed to afford to keep up with everything

Whole thing feels like a pretty US-centric narrative.

i'd rather have a us-centric narrative than anything involving cargo pants + oakleys hipsters

Possibly from the creators of Juno and Fuckface's Ultimate Playlist.

JUST saw this preview, wtFFFFFF