The wonderful world of Hipsters

Nicely put, VICE. Bringing up the rear last week, style chronicler Peter York (the man who, in the 1980s, put a name to that useful group of whinnying, well-scrubbed gels, the Sloane Rangers) broadcast his documentary take on this social tribe. With his laconic posho delivery and bemused expression, he seemed hopelessly behind the curve identifying this ‘new’ creature that was populating Shoreditch in East London.

Once the epicentre of hipsterdom, most commentators would now agree the neighbourhood has eaten itself, disappearing into a theme park of stereotype and cliché. “Shoreditch is no longer a place, it’s a state of mind,” opined York. Yeah, Pete, totally true, but you’re about five years late to the party.

And where VICE leads, we are all sure to follow, one day, but meanwhile, London’s trickle-down hipster effect has distilled itself into a proper, revitalising scene in Scotland stretching from Glasgow to Aberdeen. Being a little further north, we are still (kind of) experiencing the full gamut of hipsterdom minus the eye-rolling and tutting of cooler people already on to something else.

Peak hipster may be happening elsewhere, but we’ve yet to reach that status in Scotland, although it’s probably not too far off. This whole movement based on resisting the mainstream has almost capitulated to being just that.

I know Shoreditch well. I worked in the heart of it for six years for a young publishing company. Sometimes when I came home to Scotland, I would breathe a sigh of relief. People were normal, still stylish, but in an individual Glasgow-stylish kind of a way. There were no dudes with Ned Kelly beards wearing skinny jeans and donkey jackets with their knobbly little mankles, jaunty matelot tops and woolly Serpico hats.

After a while this East End uniform, this craft-beer/artisanal coffee/fixie bike sensibility that oozed out of every cobbled Shoreditch street got right on your tatts. Young people, with their perfect skin and lack of problems and pontificating ideas and triple-shot Ecuadorian soya lattes and cocktails in jam jars and zero awareness that one day life will break their very souls in two, seemed easy to scorn.

Because that’s what hipsters are – young.

But beyond their youth, vitality and ability to look good in skinny jeans, what exactly is the vibe of the tribe that has colonised the likes of Finnieston in Glasgow – now proclaimed by everyone, everywhere, as the most exciting place to live in the UK – and how does it translate to a Scottish climate?

First rule of hipster club: don’t talk about hipster club.

There is a huge reluctance for hipsters to admit they’re hipsters. Whether it’s that Groucho Marx don’t-want-to-belong-to-a-club-that-would-have-me thing or that once you admit to being part of it, you’re not cool and individual any more, it’s hard to say. While everyone certainly looks the part, they are not happy to be labelled with the H word.

Caroline Young, the Edinburgh-born author of Style Tribes, says it’s about appearances. “You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard, you don’t want to be seen as a fashion victim, but expressing yourself is a good thing; you would rather be defined by what you’re interested in.”

Twenty-three year old barman Ross MacLean agrees. “Hipster is not a word I would use, it’s so overused. Yes, I am into the Lumberjack look, with the plaid shirt and the big beard, but I feel the word hipster has negative connotations, so I don’t associate myself with it. I am just interested in the things that I am interested in – craft beer and music.”

Ah, craft beer. Along with single-origin coffee and barber emporiums, craft beer completes the holy trinity of hipster signifiers. The company MacLean works for, Brewdog, has been a phenomenal Scottish business success story. And that success is down not just to superlative craft beers but extremely astute marketing and styling that surfed the hipster trend just as it began to swell into a monster wave.

Founders James Watt and Martin Dickie began their small craft-beer operation in Aberdeenshire in 2007 as the sole staff and shareholders, bottling their own home-made beers by hand. Fast forward to 2016 and this young Scottish company operates with 540 staff, 32,000 shareholders and 44 bars around the world from Scotland to Brazil, with their latest venture opening this week in Berlin – arguably the hippest city in the world.

As Peter York asserts in The Hipster Handbook, “Hipsters don’t invent, they curate, and the real creativity lies in entrepreneurial activity.”

Brewdog’s story exactly encapsulates the idea of the hipster-creators – the wave of young entrepreneurs who embraced the thinking that this trend was not just about what you looked like, but what you ate, drank and actually made – and the story you created around it.

Watt and Dickie were tired of the unimaginative, industrially-produced beers they found in pubs, so they decided to make their own beers and tell their own story. And this they did by cherry picking elements for their look – the exposed brick and stripped-back interiors, the random, confounding beer names, the logo, the graphics and the typography. They even created their own plaid shirt.

“We live in a post-post-post-modern world,” says York. “Hipsters are not looking forward, but borrowing heavily from the past. Even though they are often self-employed in modern creative industries like web design, media and architecture, they like to look like they do old-world jobs like lumberjacks and truckers: their uniform is workwear, denim, tattoos and beards,” he explains.

Indeed the notable thing about the hipster trend is just how masculine it is – the popular stereotype that dominates is overwhelmingly male and conforms to the bushy-bearded, tattoo-sleeved, plaid-clad, skinny-jeaned, beanie-wearing bloke. Women seem under-represented in a way that is rare with other style tribes – even Punk – where they are highly visible.

“Men are traditionally more limited than women in their fashion options,” says Caroline Young, “so the hipster thing was an opportunity for a lot of young men to really experiment with their own style and create a look. Women have a wider pool of influences and are more confident in diverse looks. They can choose from burlesque or vintage influences or the festival boho vibe, for example.”

Keir McCluskey, a 22-year-old designer who has landed the holy grail of hipster jobs with global social enterprise Cycle Hack (“making the world more sustainable by reducing the barriers to cycling”) also declines to be associated with the term but admits that elements of his lifestyle embrace the trend. He believes the hipster look allows men to adopt the kind of grooming and styling traditionally employed by women, but still within a very masculine look.

“If men can find a ‘uniform’ that they like, that makes them look good and is cool into the bargain, then it’s a win-win!” he laughs. “But I do think that Glasgow has its own take on the look. It’s a bit more grounded, less self-conscious and enjoyed with a good dose of tongue in cheek and individuality.”

Tony Wright of Mohair barbers feels the same way. He recently moved his small shop on King Street to a massive pogonophile’s [beardophile] emporium on the Trongate, peopled with über-hip staff and decked out in wood, neon and skulls. Beside quiffs, undercuts and Peaky Blinder flops, he does a roaring trade in grooming and beard care.

“We get all sorts of people in here, not just hipsters – a word I hate by the way. But we’ve always had stylish people in Glasgow, hipsters are not new,” he says. “I saw a guy the other day in dress trousers, a cashmere turtleneck, a moleskin coat and a huge Amish-style hat. He was certainly turning heads.

"But Glasgow isn’t Shoreditch, we don’t get too ridiculous, we like to keep it real and stay grounded. Our turn ups aren’t as big.”

For the origin of the trend that has a nostalgia for craft, vintage and heritage at its heart, we need to row back to 9/11 and the dark days America experienced following the World Trade Center atrocities. “People were looking for something to take comfort in after 9/11,” says Caroline Young. “And nostalgia can be very comforting. When things are difficult it can be easier to look back.”

In places like Brooklyn, artists were moving in to an old Jewish/Latino neighbourhood called Williamsburg, the kind of barrio that was so down-at-heel and disregarded that the rents were cheap. Following their lead were educated but low-paid youngsters also looking for cheap rents, and gradually they started creating businesses for the people around them.

It was the same in Shoreditch, a place where 20 years ago you couldn’t give away property. Where artists colonise, creativity flourishes and gives birth to a whole new community around it, energised by people who may not have money but compensate with ideas, talent and innovation.

And now that is true of places in Glasgow like Dennistoun, the Gallowgate and Finnieston where artists have traditionally and quietly worked away in places like the WASPS studios and the ramshackle spaces in the Hidden Lane behind Argyle Street. Small creative industries have collected around them and helped to grow these communities and attract new people.

In turn have come the bars, restaurants and indie shops and services like boutiques and barbers, bringing new energy to neighbourhoods that largely went unnoticed before.

The downside of that, of course, is the dreaded gentrification, the kind of development that has seen whole swathes of working-class and immigrant areas of London cleared out to make way for young urban people that can afford the new flats and houses being built. The same has happened in Brooklyn, where the once-shabby, affordable Williamsburg now has five-star hotels and $3million dollar apartments on its waterfront.

But this is perhaps where Scotland differs. Here communities seem to be managing regeneration without changing the essence of the neighbourhoods or pushing anyone out. In Glasgow’s Gallowgate, there are two projects seeking to reverse the decline of the Barras market which has suffered from serious neglect over the last few years.

Former church St Luke’s on Bain Street in the Calton has been restored and transformed into a thriving arts and music venue. Just opened behind the iconic Barrowlands music hall is BAaD (Barras Art & Design), a hub for creative talent that brings together artists’ studios, offices, a soaring glass-roofed event space and an excellent seafood restaurant and bar, with plans for street food stalls and other eating spaces.

Tellingly, there are deliberately no plans for residential development, the point being to draw people back to using and enjoying an area that was once the beating heart of the city. BAaD also aims to offer apprenticeships to local youngsters as a way of keeping the local community in mind and involved. In December it will be home to a Christmas market, giving locals the chance to see how infectious a little vision and creative energy can be in a neighbourhood.

At the other end of the city, Finnieston has proudly retained its low-key feel, fusing a handful of seriously good restaurants and cool bars with existing shops and businesses such as the Majestic Laundrette that sits like a happy matron between two achingly cool kids, a chic restaurant on one side and a buzzing bar on the other. Many places have been happy to rub away years of paint to expose and retain the vintage shop signs and original architectural elements.

And while hipsters generally come in for a lot of flak and derision, that’s what people love about the movement. It’s peopled with innovators and doers, enthusiasts who want to rejuvenate and redefine old neighbourhoods and bring something new to the community table. They want to resurrect the ideals of craftsmanship, heritage and creativity as a buffer against crass, faceless commercialisation. Peter York sums it up best in The Hipster Handbook when he acknowledges that, “hipsters marked the shift from the besuited masters of the universe to the craft beer/bike/organic/locally sourced notion of authenticity.”

But then, how long till it all tips over into parody? Already a few bandwagon joints have made an appearance in Finnieston ticking all the hipster boxes: distressed wood, exposed brick, industrial tiling? Check. Twelve kinds of chicken wings? You got it. Artisanal pizza? Naturally. Served on a shovel by someone with sailor Jerry tatts? Roger that.

And this is what so often sounds the death-knell: when big business gets wise to the act and starts to co-opt and contrive the elements of a trend to bring it to the masses.

So has our hipster scene gone mainstream? Possibly, but in Scotland it has brought so many positives that it will doubtless linger awhile. People like what has happened in their city neighbourhoods – they relish the colour, the variety, and want that energising vibe to stay. But that, inevitably will mean changing, moving on, keeping things fresh.

Already there is talk of the beard thing being on the wane. “Interest in beards will continue but I can see people in Glasgow cutting about with a big moustache,” says barber Tony Wright. “And I’ve already noticed a crossover between hipsters and skateboarders with their bobbly hats, massive oversize check shirts and three-quarter length trousers. It’s happening already.”

Scotland’s hipster scene

Glasgow

Redmonds; Dog House; Nice 'n' Sleazy; In Deep; SWG3; Brewdog; Kelvingrove Cafe; Alchemilla; The Finnieston; Soul Barber Rooms; Mohair; Brother Barbers; Mr Ben; Starry Starry Night; Glasgow Vintage Co; Saratoga Trunk

Edinburgh

Summerhall; Panda & Sons; Brewlab Coffee; Hoot the Redeemer; Skylark; The Hanging Bat; The Brotique; Aesop; Vinyl Villains; Armstrong’s; The Frayed Hem; Stockbridge Market

Dundee

Folk Cafe; Beer Kitchen; Jam Jar; Brewdog

Aberdeen

The Food Story Cafe; Brewdog; Krakatoa; Retrospect; The Closet Vintage