"Hipster" as pejorative.

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Some people feel the need to differentiate themselves by the music they listen to, or the books they read, or the movies they watch. They go out of their way to do/take part in/see things are idiosyncratic or quirky because they want to stand out from the crowds of people who do "regular" things. I'd assume a similar mindset applies to people whose focus is clothes.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:19 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost ARGH

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:19 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry but those people need to grow up!

― Granny Dainger, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:20 (seventeen years ago) link

for fuck's sakes, people. some people want to stand out, visually i guess you would say, by wearing fashionable or expensive or cheap-o or whatever clothes. some people don't. if that's the only element of their personality you're going to judge them by, you are being dumb.

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:24 (seventeen years ago) link

The same amount of talent, work, creativity and historical reference can go into a beautiful dress as some glorified painting or black and white still. Making and designing clothes is fucking hard.

You could ask the same of advertising/adv. art (minus the homophobia). Capitalism debases - most people only have a concept of fashion that involves mass retail or a bunch of richie-rich/celebrity bullshit (fashion week, couture, places where Common People can't shop). Fashion will never get the same respect as fine art because it is seen largely as an economic enterprise and irrelevant to the lives of most.

On the DIY/thrift angle, clothes-making seems to be more about craft and usability than art school concept. DIY sewing is cool, looking like the neck-tattoo douchebag from Project Runway is not.

― milo z, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:27 (seventeen years ago) link

it's like judging people by their taste in food. or.. er... music.

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:27 (seventeen years ago) link

can't we all just get along?

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:27 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry but those people need to grow up!

Granny Dainger on Friday, March 16, 2007 7:20 PM

Why is this a juvenile mindset?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Fair enough, Slocki, but have you not encountered people for whom consumer choices in music and/or fashion are defining aspects of their personality?

― milo z, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:29 (seventeen years ago) link

of course it's not the ONLY element i'd judge them on! i'm sure there's tons of other aspects about them which would allow me to look down on them more fully.

― Granny Dainger, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Fair enough, Slocki, but have you not encountered people for whom consumer choices in music and/or fashion are defining aspects of their personality?

if i have, they never mentioned it

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:29 (seventeen years ago) link

allow me to look down on them more fully.

I'm starting to think you're the most egregious hipster here.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:30 (seventeen years ago) link

for whom consumer choices in music and/or fashion are defining aspects of their personality?

I would say those people I met who may meet of that stripe had OBSESSION as a defining aspect, no matter the channel of said obsession.

― Abbott, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:32 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah to be honest the only kind of person i can imagine that description applying to would be a pretty pathological one

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:33 (seventeen years ago) link

because consciously choosing hobbies/clothes/art to stand out from The Rest Of Society paradoxically means that The Rest of Society (of whom these people are presumably trying to say "you do not run my life. i am my own unique person.) is having an equal, or even greater, effect on your life than on the "sheep', and only a person with a juvenile mindset wouldn't realize this.

― Granny Dainger, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:34 (seventeen years ago) link

one the other hand i'm sure i've met people for whom consumer choices in music and/or fashion are defining aspects of their social selves. and i don't think there's anything wrong with that.

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:34 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm starting to think you're the most egregious hipster here.

I'm starting to think you have 0 sense of humor.

― Granny Dainger, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:35 (seventeen years ago) link

dude get one sense of the Wry.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:42 (seventeen years ago) link

i dunno maybe i'm projecting here. when i was a juvenile, i wanted to stand out. or something. so i dyed my hair strange colors, wore crazy thrift store shirts, etc etc. and then eventually I came to think it was all silly and start to agree with the mindset of my good friend, who grew out of all that earlier than I did, and by junior year of high school was wearing, like, plain colored tshirts and khakis all the time. not because he no longer wanted to stand out so much as he just didn't feel like TRYING SO HARD.

― Granny Dainger, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:44 (seventeen years ago) link

so basically you couldn't hack it.

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:52 (seventeen years ago) link

perhaps there is another explanation

so no speculation about who posted that ad? disappointing.

― gabbneb, Saturday, 17 March 2007 00:54 (seventeen years ago) link

You're right, choosing to focus on things like clothes (vs. immaterials like personality) as a way of standing out takes a lot of effort. I used to make the effort too! I wouldn't be surprised if lots of us around here did, especially when we were younger. I just think (imho!) its a mistake to characterize the effort-in-itself as juvenile. Certainly this feeds into ideas of "hipster"-types being cliquey and catty because their lifestyle lends itself to such juvenilia, but I don't think it's fair to say that anyone who manifests their personality in material things like record collections or clothing choice or show-going is juvenile by default.

har ha /insulation from charges of humorlessness

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:01 (seventeen years ago) link

damn you lack of xpost notification!

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:01 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost

― Abbott, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:08 (seventeen years ago) link

I was just pretending it still existed.

xxpost

― Abbott, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:09 (seventeen years ago) link

you guys are getting all wound up unnecessarily, maybe? I like fashion, I like clothes - it's interesting to see how people put things together.. I mean, it makes the morning kind of fun, sometimes, if I'm looking around thinking OK I have these dark caramel trousers and black top and *some* bright color wants to go with this to make it unusual.. hmm.. a-ha! bright peri blue! that's it. don't take it so seriously.

those wild psychedelic maxi dresses from the 70's are about to be right back in style so maybe the "vintage" shops will be able to sell 'em off finally. (I woudn't wear them, they don't suit me)

― daria-g, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:11 (seventeen years ago) link

i know this is getting quite far now from the concept of hipsterism but if you think about it in terms of peoples homes wouldnt you be really impressed if you visited a friend who had all this cool stuff - some of which was found on the street and some of which was from thrift stores, or from ikea, and they had a few nice expensive pieces that they could afford to get partly because the rest of it cos next-to-nothing, rather than they they had this nice mid-range good tast environment that they lived in (that was equivelent to a nice pressed shirt and well shined shoes)? would you think those people with the somewhat individual living space were "trying too hard" and that it was something that was worth "growing out of"?

― jed_, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:34 (seventeen years ago) link

i take people on a case by case basis. seriously. though i end up hating most of them.

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:35 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah and to follow up on what jed said, would you think that people who are really into art and have gone to great effort to collect interesting art etc etc.

― s1ocki, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Let's not short-shrift stuff, though, Daria. This stuff definitely has meaning beyond being just fun, even if its only because we assign it meaning: we're assigning it collectively, so it means something to us.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:38 (seventeen years ago) link

jed otm

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:40 (seventeen years ago) link

another response regarding thrift stores: you can't get a Halston, or any other name-brand couture suit, for $4 anywhere... except in the Midwest. Reason: those who run thrift stores on the coasts know that they can mark up like crazy and people will still buy. It's simple.

Also, the 7 am thing is true... also true is knowing which day they restock the shelves. At the thrift stores of greater Cleveland, this is Tuesdays. Dumbos go on Mondays, when everything is 50% but there's nothing there. On a Tuesday, one can find Dior, Ferragamo, even Gucci. (I'm not some crazy fashion dude, either. That is, I also shop at Target, Ross and the Dollar Store, too).

― the table is the table, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:43 (seventeen years ago) link

the east and west coasts are very large areas! give me a month and i will find you a halston suit!

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:46 (seventeen years ago) link

but, yeah, don't get me started on the whole marking up the price on "collectables" thing. don't get me started!

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 01:47 (seventeen years ago) link

But jed, what about people who purchased every single object in their home from a single modernist boutique, just looked through the catalogue/store and bought three rooms worth?

Whenever I hear people rag on hipsters, they aren't talking about bohemians who build their own furniture and dumpster dive for recontextualized art - they're talking about people who've purchased, sometimes at large cost, an entire lifestyle or trendy fashion sense or home or record collection, etc..

― milo z, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Which is to say that anti-hipsters are probably battling strawmen for the most part, but so are anti-anti-hipsters here.

― milo z, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:13 (seventeen years ago) link

the only think worse than that is when buyers fall for the price markup/hype and prices soar due to the "collectibility" vicious cycle feedback.

― ▒█▄█ ▄▄ ▒█▄█, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:13 (seventeen years ago) link

i am all for fickle hipsters too, cuz they trade their new records back in when they get bored and i can get them cheaper.

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:14 (seventeen years ago) link

motherfuck a scott seward xpost (code this shit right britishes)

― ▒█▄█ ▄▄ ▒█▄█, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:14 (seventeen years ago) link

oh, i guess he understood i was speaking to his point

― ▒█▄█ ▄▄ ▒█▄█, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:14 (seventeen years ago) link

How do we (socially) create the monolithic idea of The Norm?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:15 (seventeen years ago) link

don't get me wrong, i definitely preferred it when thrift stores were frequented by the insane, the elderly, and the infirm. they were just looking for belts to hold their trousers up. antiques friggin' roadshow fucked a lot of stuff up for a lot of people.

― scott seward, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:16 (seventeen years ago) link

haha fuck a sociology essay question, looked like the thread slowed and i wanted to stir up some shit.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:17 (seventeen years ago) link

some people want to stand out, visually i guess you would say, by wearing fashionable or expensive or cheap-o or whatever clothes. some people don't. if that's the only element of their personality you're going to judge them by, you are being dumb.

The thing is, I think I generally dislike people who "want to stand out", particularly on a day-to-day basis. Then again, I think I have an overall aversion to attention-getting behavior -- it just makes me think of highly self-involved theater majors who talk too loud. For the most part, I prefer understatement -- and/or, when people do stand out, I want it to be (or at least seem) unselfconscious.

― lurker #2421, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:28 (seventeen years ago) link

when people do stand out, I want it to be (or at least seem) unselfconscious.

thank god for acid.

― the table is the table, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:39 (seventeen years ago) link

brokeN?

― daria-g, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:49 (seventeen years ago) link

halston is designer, not couture. couture is a very specific type of collection all hand sewn.. futhermore halston did a lot of bridge line pieces that were sold in dept stores all over the place (halston III for example) so if you include that the stuff is everywhere on thrift/resale

― daria-g, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:49 (seventeen years ago) link

i've only thrifted on east coast and the staff just miss things. they look for known names, like coach bags and gucci bags, and sometimes they just don't check is all. for example the armani dress was $10, and it's top line giorgio armani and in perfect condition, not out of style. they just tagged it as a regular dress. i guess if you can tell good fabric after a while it's not hard to pick out nice things

i don't mind the hipster/trendy people buying vintage though. what that means is, i can sell an old hobo slouch bag or babydoll dress that's just an 80's fast fashion piece on ebay for $100 because it's a hot trend, and take that $100 and buy a few beautifully cut and sewn vintage 40's dresses that fit amazingly.. or maybe take half of it and buy these narciso rodriguez shoes i've been eyeing b/c apparently hardly anyone on ebay wants em

― daria-g, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:49 (seventeen years ago) link

also re: hipsters I appreciate when people take ugly clothes and ugly things and make them interesting and sort of stylish..

the trouble is they just take it too far..

sometimes it's awesome like this guy

― daria-g, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:52 (seventeen years ago) link

i meant designer, not couture... my bad. my mind was awash with the new yorker article on lagerfeld.

also, agreed to your xpost. peoples is dumbos.

(i bought a pair of amazing Armani trousers in a shade of tan that are sooo soft-- but they looked like crap as pants, on me at least. so i made them cut-offs. $2 spent, a few years of Armani cutoffs gained)

― the table is the table, Saturday, 17 March 2007 02:55 (seventeen years ago) link

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