Peter York's Hipster Handbook

You've seen them, haven't you?

Those guys with the big beards and the lumberjacky clothes.

And you've probably got a word for them too.

You probably call them hipsters.

But you don't necessarily know any.

They live in very urban areas in big cities.

They're not exactly a subculture, nor exactly a tribe.

But they're united by a love for buying special, real things.

This cup of coffee is a 12 cup of coffee.

12?

-So you have to be...

-Blimey, thank you very much!

They're very keen on food.

In the '60s you would pick up your guitar,

nowadays you might open up a cafe.

And they make things, too - in an artisanal way, whatever that means.

We've got hops and stout, Bethnal Pale Ale.

Bethnal Pale Ale(!)

-Well, I'm obviously going to hate it.

-Of course.

And everything they make comes with a back story,

and it's supposed to be authentic and real.

Though it's often beautifully designed.

So it's kind of make do and mend, leaving things as you found them.

Exposed walls, raw floors.

Naked light bulbs.

But big business has got in on the act pretty quickly.

And all this hipster stuff is being packaged up and sold back to us.

Did you give your class a kit to look hipsterish?

No. I think what you try to do is...

-Somebody did!

-Somebody did.

But now there's a backlash starting.

Once a term for cool

is now something no-one wants to hear somehow.

It's come to represent something a bit political.

200 people turned up outside branding torches

and wearing pigs' masks,

throwing paint bombs at the window.

I'm Peter York.

I'm a market researcher.

So putting people into groups is my job.

This is a film about hipsters.

Who are these people,

and what does it all mean?

This is Shoreditch, East London.

It used to be an actual place, but now it's a state of mind.

And it's the most inventive place imaginable.

It's been summoned up from nowhere, from nothing, from post-industrial,

urban wreckage, by the voodoo forces of contemporary art,

clever developers, and media, in a period of about ten or 15 years.

And it's a sort of Shangri-La,

a place where no-one need ever grow up.

It's a constant theme park, based around the hipster lifestyle.

I'm always looking around as a researcher and as a writer,

I like a nice new group.

In the early '80s, with Ann Barr,

I co-wrote The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook,

which was a very popular guide

to a tribe of upper middle-class young people.

The archetypal Sloane Ranger lived in expensive parts

of West London, like Kensington and Chelsea,

and escaped to their parents' place in the country at weekends.

More than 30 years on, there's a new group in town

that people talk about. They're in EAST London.

Hipsters are difficult to understand,

if you look at them with 20th-century comparisons in mind.

They're not like the old teenage tribes, the hippies and punks.

They're not like social or cultural revolutionaries.

It doesn't work like that.

Now, we're living in a post-POST-modern world.

Sorry about that term.

This group doesn't seem to be looking forward.

Hipsters borrow heavily from the past,

taking things up and putting them down again, they're very retro.

The Cereal Killer Cafe in Shoreditch is supposed to be a hipster joint.

What they do is import breakfast cereal from all around the world

and serve it in an interior

that looks like the set of a children's TV show.

I could give you Raisin Bran Crunch...

Raisin Bran Crunch, fantastic.

-That sounds nice, yeah?

-Yes.

Hipsters use irony in a way that allows them to consume

pretty much anything - no matter how mass cult or banal,

as long as it's done with a nod and a wink.

But they're often quite heartfelt

about what they're actually doing.

Thank you very much.

The Cereal Killer Cafe is ironic in the way art school people are ironic

about popular culture.

The owners, twin brothers Gary and Alan Keery,

look very hipstery with their hair buns and beards.

Gary did art school, Alan ran a cool menswear shop in London.

But the H word seems to be a problem for them.

I don't think there's anybody that'll call themselves a hipster.

I wouldn't consider myself a hipster. You know, some people

think just cos you ride a bike, you're hipster.

Just cos you buy clothes in a charity shop, you're hipster.

-Just cos you have a beard and tattoos, you're hipster.

-Mm.

We hoped that you had the answer.

I don't. Sorry!

To me, what people think is a hipster, is someone who's...

who works in the creative industry, They're just being themselves.

Most people who you would tag as hipster

aren't trying to be anything.

There is some people who would be, like, "I want to be a hipster

"and I will dress in the hipster costume."

But then most people are just doing what they... Just being themselves.

Well, Alan and Gary are clearly on the run from the hipster stigma.

And this sounds as if it's going to be harder than I imagined.

So I've enlisted some experts to help guide me through.

What defines hipsters for you?

I think that the hipster

is a relative concept,

I think it is defined differently by different people

with different agendas.

I think it would be very rarely defined by

hipsters themselves. I think it's unlikely

that people would refer to themselves AS hipsters.

It is an epithet that tends to be applied by other people

to things that they perceive to be hipster.

Nobody truly living that subculture wants to be identified

as being part of that subculture.

Which is odd, but kind of the point.

Erm, I think...

being a hipster revolves around

removing yourself from the banal and the obvious, and the mainstream.

And what is mass.

And as soon as you do that,

if someone then says, "Oh, you're part of that,"

-then it's ruined your...removal, as it were.

-Spoilt your day!

-Exactly.

-Spoilt your day.

So, if hipsters just won't admit to being one,

how do you recognise them?

I'm going to start with the look.

All movements are SUPPOSED to have a look.

So what's theirs?

-Hello.

-Hello.

-I'm on a mission...

to find out what I should have in the unlikely event

that I wanted to dress as a hipster.

OK. Our store isn't just for hipsters.

-No!

-But we have got a few items that I could pick out and show you

what a typical hipster guy would wear.

So, probably our Levi's jeans...

-Yes.

-Um...

-Black Levi's.

-Mm-hm.

Obviously our workwear jackets as well.

-I'm not against work.

-No?

Maybe one of our flannel shirts.

-Oh...

-How do YOU feel about it?

Too woodsy.

SHE LAUGHS

This looks very... outdoorsy, American...

Yeah. Would you wear one?

No. SHE LAUGHS

Everything's very oversized.

-Yes. I'd noticed.

-The baggier, the better.

It's the opposite of sleek.

-Yeah, I guess so.

-And the opposite of Italian designer menswear.

Yeah.

The clothes are meant to say,

"I'm outside of mass conformist shopping centre looks.

"I don't follow celebrity styles. I make my own choices."

You'll be astonished to hear this isn't 100% my sort of thing,

but I'm learning, and what I've learnt is there isn't a uniform.

It isn't properly tribal, like any tribe I've known in the past,

it's much more...fashiony,

more pick and mix, more...ironic.

I think there are a number of reference points within

the hipster look that point to previous trends,

or previous youth cultures.

I think you have the jeans, lots of jeans, very much 1950s teenagers.

The rolled denim in particular is a nod to the greasers back then.

There's a kind of mod feel as well

in the more streamlined pieces that hipsters tend to wear.

And then there's grunge in the mix too - the plaid shirts,

the long hair and the general sort of...scruffiness.

The East End of London was, until recently, a poor area,

where people did hard manual work in docks and factories and workshops.

But many of those jobs don't exist now

and great swathes of the area have become, sort of,

middle-class neighbourhoods,

where the NEW people can play at dressing up.

They're often playing at being these rugged old hard-working types

with jobs like truckers or lumberjacks.

Old world jobs they don't actually know anything about.

It's something this shop, run by Andrew Bolt, understands very well.

All these things are sort of workwear or purpose wear,

aren't they? And yet the people who wear them

-aren't necessarily going to have that purpose, are they?

-No.

It's a very easy fashion to adopt.

Workwear doesn't scream when it walks in a room.

It has a kind of...

a confidence in its authenticity and heritage, I guess.

It's not saying, "Look at me, I'm in fashion."

It's kind of saying, well, you can't have a pop at me,

because this stuff's been around for 100 years.

So there's a kind of...I guess a comfort in that.

I'm interested in items that are timeless. That are...

You know, a lot of my jackets have been made exactly the same

since the '50s. So in a way...

that's hipster in itself. You know,

this jacket is made exactly the same as it was back then.

-Gosh!

-And this will last you, not a lifetime, this will last you

multiple lifetimes.

Yes. And it's also very erm...masculine.

I think so, yeah.

We don't do the primary industries as much as we used to do.

There's a kind of a masculinity gap, I guess.

And I think this kind of workwear coming through

may be a way of kind of harking back to that,

romanticising this idea of...

getting up and working on the railway lines

for 18 hours a day or whatnot. I think, you know, that masculinity

that they might be missing elsewhere in their lives can be kind of

taken off the peg and put on straight away, through fashion.

A masculinity gap, oh!

Up to now, everyone's focused on men. They're easier to spot.

But presumably there are hipster women, too?

Hipsterism, I think, is not an entirely male phenomenon,

but I do think that the male hipster is a much more readily recognisable

stereotype than the female hipster.

The male hipster...

stereotypically, has a uniform.

So, a beard, for example, is a key one. Tattoos, maybe.

The hipster mode appealed to men more because you could get

quite geeky with it.

I think, having had a decade or so of everyone looking quite sleek and

sharp, and also very commercial, suddenly, you could grow your hair,

you could grow a dodgy tash, you could see what a beard looked like.

I think it was a loosening of what was considered fit or attractive.

And I think young men - certain young men - really went for it.

Many of the clothes have come from old-fashioned manual trades.

But the beard thing really is a bit harder to place.

Beards were probably last in fashion with the hippies, prog rockers,

or Jeremy Corbyn.

It's a very male thing.

Most ladies really can't do it, so it's filling that gap.

A lot of effort goes into these extravagant symbols.

And in East London's hipster land,

most barbershops offer specialist beard and moustache management.

Keep it similar to what it is.

-Get it well-rounded at the bottom, get a good shape going on.

-Yeah.

And have a little tidy up, keep it all in proportion, really.

So in regards to the shape, you're looking to get a bit more roundness,

a bit more of a lumberjack-type sort of finish to it?

-That's exactly it.

-Would you like it quite natural

-through the edges for you?

-Yeah. Sure.

-OK, cool.

So if you'd just like to lean forward for me,

I'm just going to lean this back.

'I've come to a railway arch in Hackney

'to meet beard barber Lee Wells.'

-Does that feel comfortable?

-That's fine, yeah.

'But what's behind the bearded look?'

You were talking about lumberjacks.

Yep.

What's that?

So, lumberjacks is a term of...

lumbosexual,

which is a gent who aspires to having that outdoorsy...

..wild, unkept look.

I think it's like, you have the metrosexual

and then the lumbosexual,

it's just a term that, sort of, people aspire to

-to have that type of look.

-Yes.

'Lumbosexual.

'That's a new one on me.'

Are there any other current beard-look names?

So, the lumberjack is more of a roundish shape.

Last year and the year before, the square beard was quite popular.

People quite like a Viking beard, or a wizard beard.

Quite a popular beard at the moment is called the Verdi beard.

Bit similar to myself.

What sort of jobs do most of your customers have?

A lot of people are self-employed,

in like, either media, architects, web design.

That type of field.

So people do, sort of, find themselves sitting behind a PC

or behind a desk and not having that feel of being in touch with, like,

their masculine side.

'They all do those kinds of jobs, really,

'like so many people now, especially people around here.

'It seems a bit of a contradiction,

'but Lee's shelves are groaning

'with beautifully designed grooming products.

'It's so not the lumberjack's cabin here. This could be Mayfair.'

Would you like some beard conditioner in there,

-for you, today?

-Yes.

-Do you have any allergies at all?

You allergic to anything?

LIQUID SQUIRTS

'Beard conditioner?

'Like moisturiser for hairy people.

'I still don't quite get this beardy thing.

'It seems a bit steampunk, a bit neo-Victorian.

'And a bit homosexy.

'A bit Clonezone,

'a bit...Tom Selleck in Magnum PI.

'But what IS riveting is the amount of time and effort

'that goes into maintaining this manly, authentic, rugged look.

'It's just as constructed as the metrosexual look

'that went before it.'

Cool. If you'd like to lean forward for me.

-Well. That's good, isn't it?

-Really nice.

-You like it?

-Really nice.

'Hipsters today are always on about looking "authentic".

'But what does that word mean, really?

'Does it mean real, not fake?

'Is THAT the hipster big idea?'

To understand where it's coming from,

we need to look at where the word hipster first came from.

The little syllable "hip" was in use as early as 1902 in black America.

During the jazz age, the word was used by black musicians to describe

anyone who was tuned in, or in the know about their world,

and their music.

Somehow, in the 1930s,

"hip" acquired the common English suffix

and the word "hipster" was born.

It's funny - when we use the word today, the "hipster,"

and we speak of a present-day category,

that name identifies a completely different set of people

in the 1940s and 1950s. Black American hipsters, jazz performers,

and the people who hung around them at the clubs on 52nd Street.

That's the kind of original hipster.

There's an interesting problem

with that little syllable "hip".

After all, hip jazz musicians

in the 1940s and 1950s

said that if you have to ask what it means to be hip, you're NOT hip.

But those new 1950s hipsters WEREN'T black -

they were young, middle-class white people trying to tune into

the lifestyle of the black musicians they followed.

To find something lacking in THEIR world.

Often with hilarious misunderstandings.

America's economy was booming away then.

Regular people had regular jobs.

They bought little box houses

and filled them with all the newly produced mod cons.

Beatniks influenced by writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

positioned themselves against this materialist tide.

Their challenge was that there were more important things in life than

possessions, and hipness was about more than just a toaster.

It was about expressing your uniquely marvellous self.

Hipness is something that you start to see after World War II,

and the classic definition comes from Norman Mailer

in an essay from the 1950s.

He basically says that hipness is a way of resisting the mass society.

So it's the mass society versus the hipster.

You know, the fake versus the authentic,

the scientific versus the irrational.

And so, the hipster was this figure who refused to conform,

who did everything his own way.

The word was marginalised by the massive wave of the pop 1960s,

until the late 1990s, when it re-emerges to describe people who,

when you look closely, seem completely different.

I think that hipsters, as they're really reborn for us, around 2000,

actually don't seem to have any continuity with the earlier world

of black hipsters especially, or of jazz etc.

In fact, what's so shocking about them

is that they seem to align themselves with whiteness,

who suddenly turned up in neighbourhoods that had been black,

Latino in New York,

and occupied almost the place of a kind of ethnic group.

# I'm hip, but not weird

# Like you notice, I don't wear a beard... #

Unlike the hipsters we mentioned earlier,

the white bohemians following black jazz musicians

and riffing on their lives,

these new American hipsters seemed only to be referencing

WHITE stereotypes.

One of their key settlements was the area of Williamsburg

in Brooklyn, just across the river from Manhattan in New York.

To really understand the movement and find out about hipsterdom today,

I'm going back to source.

New Bohemia, here I come.

This is Bedford Avenue. It's the main drag of Williamsburg,

and people say this is where it all started, back in the early 1990s.

And now, it's a very respectable neighbourhood.

And there's something for everyone. It's actually

a popular tourist destination, and it's in all the guides.

But 20-plus years ago, Williamsburg was still a poor,

largely Latino and Jewish neighbourhood.

And it was from there this whole thing began.

Some people would date

the rise of hipsters to the colonisation of

devastated neighbourhoods of New York City, by artists

and other people who are highly educated,

but not particularly well paid.

So often they moved into working-class neighbourhoods

or even industrial neighbourhoods, where rents were low.

These people became visible, by opening up businesses -

bars and cafes and art galleries -

to cater to people like themselves, with certain kinds of tastes for,

maybe, the quirky, the unusual, the very contemporary.

Now that it's all poshed up, it's hard to find pioneer hipsters

in amongst all of these tourists and fancy shops selling cheese.

Sir, I like the way you have your brake on your pants

a little long.

Maybe I should just be pulling my pants up a bit more.

I would say. But that's a rather handsome-looking overcoat

you got!

You're being quite fashionable today.

-It's the native dress of my country.

-Really?

-Yes.

We're on a mission, and perhaps you can help us.

We've come all the way to Bedford Avenue,

in search of a mythical creature.

-Something a bit like a unicorn.

-Like a what?

-Bit like a unicorn.

-OK.

-The hipster.

I just think you should just browse, and you'll see

all different types of uh... misbehaviour.

-Just hang out?

-Yeah.

So THIS is the birthplace of 21st-century hipsterism.

But what's the scene today? Has Williamsburg lost its cool?

And who are the hipsters now?

There certainly seem to be fewer beards around.

-Hipster?

-Yep.

-What is it?

It's a person about to become a yuppie, I think.

It's a person about to become a yuppie?

It's a person in the creative class...

-Yes.

-..about to become a yuppie.

Creative class. Yuppie. So being a hipster today

IS a middle-class thing.

Kind of no longer a badge of cool -

and not something a cool person aspires to be.

It's something that people say to negate the ideas

of a learned person with any ounce of style, normally.

So if you had a turtleneck on...

-So a put-down?

-Well, it's a put- down. Repression, right...

'Greg Ferreira is an artist and musician with his own

'recording studio in Brooklyn. And he's had experience

'of the NEGATIVE use of the word.'

I might come out with some Albert Einstein theory,

-and blow your mind, right?

-Yes.

Two minutes later, some dude who does not value what I'm saying,

looks at me and goes, "Hipster". And it's over.

When I was a kid, I had hair down here and I played guitar

in heavy bands.

And I skateboarded. I got called a headbanger.

Then I got a little bit older, I heard some good records.

When Bad Brains went on, I was like, "Oh, short hair!"

Then, I got short hair and then it was, "Now, you're a punk."

Here we are now, and I'm a hipster. All I am is a collection of all

-of those different...

-All of those things. All of your enthusiasms.

The things that I've loved.

Are you in line of descent from the beatnik people?

I don't know. I've read Ginsberg, you know...

Am I a DESCENDANT of those people?

As far as I know, I'm a descendant of the Portuguese people!

I'm not sure about... Do I consider myself a hipster?

It's too easy to label. Like, I've gone through some trouble

to be a diverse character, and now you're just going to stick me

in the hipster category?! That's easy. I've always considered

myself a rocker.

If I have to be one thing, if I have to go down as one thing,

can I please just be a rocker?

That's one reason.

But why do so many people like Greg

not want to be labelled as a hipster?

I think there was a huge backlash to the initial hipster movement,

which was the sort of early 2000s,

complaining that it was perhaps the first countercultural movement,

or youth culture movement, that had nothing at its core -

no kind of belief system, no moral cause.

No fight. No verve, really, that it was...

horribly commercial in a way and kind of empty at its core.

After that backlash,

people didn't really want any part of being a hipster

and so what grew from it

was hipster culture that no-one wanted to be named as part of.

So, it actually became much more wholesome.

The next incarnation of hipsters is someone who has sort of...

community spirit and community roots

and they're interested in the authenticity of where they live

and the things they buy,

it's kind of an organic... agrarian take on modern life.

There it is again, that word - "authentic".

So it's not just the trusty look and vibe of the woodsman

we met at the beginning of the film.

It's also about what you make and eat.

Oh, I'm afraid we're into the craft movement here. SO not me.

New hipsters love making things now.

Earthy, old-fashioned things.

East London is absolutely full of cottage industries now,

most of which seem to be based in railway arches

and run by men with...beards, living the dream.

# Tutti frutti, fruity

# Tutti frutti, fruity

# Tutti frutti, tutti frutti... #

Ed Taylor gave up a career as a web designer

to start a business with his partner making traditional sodas.

That means fizzy drinks.

So, is this your global delivery system?

This is an amazing bike.

We use this for nipping about in the local area,

if we've got to get fruit from Ridley Road

or drop off a couple of cases to the local cafe.

So these under here are called medlars.

They look like they've rotted already.

That's kind of the point. When they're unripe, you can't eat them,

they taste awful. They only taste palatable, and I would say good,

once they've bletted, so that's once they've started to ferment out.

So this one's beautiful.

The stuff inside here looks horrible, but is delicious,

-if you like that sort of thing.

-I'll do it very carefully.

Don't be afraid.

It tastes a bit like caramel apple sauce.

Yes, it does. What a surprise. You could come to like it, couldn't you?

They're not as bad as they look.

Although this may LOOK like a craft hobby,

apparently they're producing 12,000 bottles a week

from all this awful-looking fruit.

People talk about the kind of thing that you're doing.

Lots of words they use, like - small, local business,

entrepreneur, craft.

-Yeah.

-But the word they use all the time...is hipster.

-How do you feel about that?

-I think trying to define a business

that has so many, or any business that has quite a big social impact

in a local area - to call it a hipster movement maybe makes it seem

like you just pigeonhole it into one category,

maybe that's difficult?

Ed might not think he's part of any movement, but those ideas -

local, handmade - were picked up by the cool hunters.

It's their job to spot new trends and pass their findings

on to big business. Martin Raymond, of Future Laboratory,

was one of the first people to see its potential.

You saw people redefining a sense of neighbourhood again.

Talking about craft, artisanship, creativity.

So suddenly you were seeing that rather than commercialism

becoming important,

culture and the notion of the culture neighbourhood

or the culture city. And I think the hipster really defined that shift

from the kind of suited masters of the universe

to the kind of craft beer, the bike - the notion of authenticity.

The feeling of everything should be organic

and everything should be sourced locally.

So really, in itself that was hugely different.

Oof! Enough already!

I should say now that I'm one of the most inauthentic people

in the world. I'm allergic to those words "craft" and "artisanal".

I dislike them

because it sounds like an easy reactionary sentimentalism.

But as a marketeer,

I can see that the craft philosophy is a hugely seductive one.

So I'm venturing forth, and heading towards yet another railway arch

in Bethnal Green, to meet master brewer James Rylands.

This is going to be quite a test for someone like me

who normally drinks nice wine.

We've got hops and stout...

Yeah?

Golly, that's sweet.

As not a beer drinking man, what do you think?

As the most non-beer-drinking man possible,

I think it's amazingly nice!

And, for me, almost bearable.

Charming!

Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to what would have been produced,

in essence, in London, you know, strong stouts importers

-that were produced in East London.

-Are you saying

that's what an imaginary working man

would have been drinking 100 years ago?

Closer than...most commercial stouts, yeah.

-Well, lucky old them.

-Yeah.

'We've talked about how hipsters have a rugged, masculine dress code

'based on workers from the past.'

'Well, the craft producers have also adopted SKILLS from the past.'

So they serve beer here that harks back to a time when real men

drank much more beer.

Downstairs from the bar, James and his team make all the beer on-site.

-What did you do before you were a brewer?

-I did a degree in fine art.

I did a sculpture degree at Chelsea.

For me it was about creating something,

so wanting to make something that was better than was already there.

For all of us, this was our passion before it was our job.

And it is a love. It's, you know, this is what I will do,

all being well, for the rest of my life.

So there's an element of romanticism about all this?

Making things with your hands IS.

And especially in a modern economic sense,

to actually do something that is quite old school.

It's the difference between buying a generic suit off the peg,

made in Bangladesh in terrible conditions, and a handmade product.

So James isn't just a maker but he's an artist, too.

Ed and James are part of a new breed of small-scale makers

who've popped up all over East London over the past ten years.

They really like their work, and they seem extremely nice.

And it's no accident that these businesses have increased tenfold

since the financial crash of 2008,

with craft breweries shooting up from seven to 71.

At times of uncertainty,

people don't want to put their faith in numbers on a screen.

I think young people suddenly realised that their futures

weren't going to be as easy as they wanted them to be,

so I think nostalgia became quite key.

I think people wanted to have something that was real -

you know, money had turned out to not be real.

I think they were looking for something that felt more sturdy.

Sturdy. Real. Authentic.

These words keep cropping up.

The idea of authenticity means more than what you wear now.

It's a belief system.

Something people describe as virtue signalling,

which is all about showing you're doing the right thing.

It's used to describe how we should behave.

Authenticity really is THE word of the moment,

and not just in the hipster world.

The idea of authenticity comes from Rousseau, in the 18th century,

writing about people getting in touch with their inner selves.

Authenticity means to get simple.

To get inside yourself and to uncover the true essence

of who you are.

Here we go. Getting in touch with your inner self again.

I think there is a widespread desire

for a sense of authenticity

that goes far beyond any kind of hipster culture.

So there is a desire to eat

real food, wear real clothes.

The real exists in vintage furniture.

And the perception is that people who originally owned this furniture

lived lives more authentic than those that we are currently living.

Hipster interiors have to have this authentic feel, too.

So everywhere you look, there are those characteristic surfaces -

bare brick, industrial tiles,

bashed-up, reclaimed wooden floors.

Very high touch in a hi-tech world,

it's a theme park reminder of what these buildings used to be for.

In a typical hipster bike workshop stroke cafe,

I'm having a Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance moment

with architectural journalist Oliver Wainwright.

Well, the so-called hipster culture, I think, to me,

emerged in the late '90s and early 2000s.

People were being pushed, in London, further and further east

into spaces where there was a very short time on the end of a lease,

so the aesthetic came from this very provisional, ad hoc,

slightly precarious situation you were in.

So it was kind of make do and mend, leaving things as you found them,

a very kind of DIY sensibility.

Weren't they aesthetically educated, people who had the eye?

Didn't they know what they were doing?

So rather than talking about hipster design, I think it's more

interesting to talk about how hipsters curate spaces.

Everything is curated, from menus to interiors,

it's about showing that you have an individual sensibility and taste.

So you kind of pick and mix, find things from obscure vintage stores,

or from the darkest corners of eBay.

You bring it together in this process of bricolage.

I would say hipster design is a process of collaging, of layering,

of being a kind of promiscuous magpie, and sourcing things

from whichever period or culture you're interested in.

It's about expressing individuality. That's the idea of it, anyway.

The original meaning of the word "hip" was "in the know",

and the thing that marks out hipsters

is that they're knowing in all their choices.

They don't seem to invent things like real artists do - they curate,

collect and gather objects into a museum of curiosities.

But their real creativity seems to lie in entrepreneurial enterprises.

They're particular about what they buy,

and one of the things that they're particularly fussy about is coffee.

They seem to spend half their day in coffee shops, writing

and being creative on their laptops and phones.

Coffee is at the centre of the hipster world,

so getting it right is worth a lot of money.

In Williamsburg, every coffee shop seems to have a different

selling strategy to help distinguish themselves.

Selling the hipster product is all about one crucial element -

back story. And this cafe has a remarkable one.

Their story is that they're sourcing fresh coffee beans from Columbia,

and roasting them faster than anywhere else in the world.

The founder and managing director is Steven Sutton.

This cup of coffee is a 12 cup of coffee.

-Is a what?

-12 cup of coffee.

-12?

-So you have to be...

Blimey! Thank you very much!

That's a bean that's around...

-Right now, that should be around 18 days old.

-Mm-hm.

Before roasting, and it was roasted yesterday.

So it's freshly roasted, fresh coffee.

It's actually going to taste not like a coffee,

it's going to taste more like tea. It has a lot of floral notes,

a lot of lemon notes, a lot of Mandarin notes.

It's very fruity, very citrusy.

Try it out. It's going to be a little different.

I'm worried about not doing justice to the things you told me about.

Or not being able to notice them.

Worst case scenario, you're going to definitely have a very, very,

very different type of coffee.

And it IS extremely nice, but I'm now, you see,

I'm now convinced that I'm tasting all the things you've said.

'What I love is all this creativity applied to selling their coffee.

'Steven's customers are the illuminati,

'where the badge of cool is a 12 cup of coffee

'and knowing the story that goes with it.'

Tell me about your customers.

This is a farm-to-table movement.

It is definitely a hipster movement in that sense that

all of my clients are very into that movement.

It doesn't mean that you have to be a hipster to do it.

You don't have to be hipster to like this, but it helps.

The new movement that is being created,

and I guess it's the new generation,

it's a generation full of information.

They want to know that there's real traceability,

they want to know there is information behind it.

We have to be sustainable, environmental, social.

So there's a mainstream political thing

about how money gets spread around, and who gets the money

and stuff like that, and there is an ecological thing about

sustainability and land use and all that stuff.

And then there's a thing of people saying,

"I want the real thing, I will research it like crazy

"and to determine what the real thing is and not buy something

"because it's got a beautiful logo and a famous brand."

Exactly.

That's quite a burden for a cup of coffee to bear, isn't it?

Actually, you get a lot for your money here.

You get a little sort of play, with lovely set dressing,

with beautiful sacks of coffee,

and then you watch people doing artisanal things.

Sifting and sorting and roasting coffee to its peak of perfection.

I think we can see a hipster-style businesses as part of a sort of

broader legacy from the hippie counterculture.

But they have an ethos

that these products are not simply material goods,

but they can add a meaningful element to your lives.

So there are stories attached to them,

there are values attached to them.

And through consuming those products rather than others, you demonstrate

your commitment to a certain sort of ethical framework.

If you're seeking out authenticity, then obviously it has a back story.

It tells a story about where it came from,

what its origins were,

who made it, why they make it,

their beliefs. So you're not just buying that product,

you're buying a sort of history that product.

Storytelling is fundamentally important to everything about us

as human beings, the way we are.

The hipster, in a way, realises that they're seeking that,

they're seeking, what is the story behind it?

And to sell something supernormally special

at an eye-watering high price, you have to have a wonderful story.

You have to have a very evolved marketing practice.

But get this approach right, and you can make an awful lot of money.

-Hello.

-Hello!

Can that really be £48?

-That little box?

-Yes, 24 chocolates in there.

£48, blimey!

These super-expensive chocolates are sold all over the world,

and come with the mother of all back stories.

The Mast brothers use a traditional sailing boat to go and pick up their

cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic,

and sail them back to New York.

The Mast brothers have put this marketing strategy

to very good effect.

They've put chocolate onto a whole different level,

as luxury brand fashion.

Hello. How do you do?

-Rick...

-Yes.

-Hi. Michael.

-Michael.

-Welcome to our chocolate factory.

-Oh!

Isn't it so beautiful?

Their USP is that they make all of their expensive chocolates,

costing nearly £10 a bar -

that's one the size of a £1.50 slab of you know who's fruit and nut -

here on site, from bean to bar.

A hipster-style Willy Wonka factory.

The chocolate that we're making is not just another bar on the shelf.

It's a story. It's an education.

It's a whole experience.

Nearly 90% of the chocolate consumed

in the world is made by three companies,

so to be able to disrupt that, makes us feel like

we're that rock and roll band that we were never able to be in!

Some might say that we're the poster children for what a hipster is,

but maybe in the '60s you would pick up your guitar,

nowadays you might open up a cafe.

Well done, those boys.

But changing the world through posh chocolate

seems a bit Marie Antoinette-ish and comic to me.

Now, interestingly, since we met,

the Mast brothers have been in the news for allegedly using

ready-made chocolate in their products.

And, even more controversially,

not even being bearded when they first started out.

They've apologised to customers, who they say they may have misled.

Who knows where the truth lies?

That's a theme we'll return to later. But, clearly, there are a lot

of people out there who want to buy cool, virtuous, luxury goods.

You have the most philanthropic impulses about remaking the world

from the ground up. And the most venal kind of

avid desires for the rarest things.

The classic hipster dynamic of - what is rarer?

What is newer? What is harder to produce, and yet,

how can I show my superior taste by knowing about it first,

by possessing it first?

A lot of energy in hipster land seems to be devoted to something

I completely recognise - luxury goods.

It's not what I was expecting...

..but it's what I call micro connoisseurship.

To be a micro connoisseur means

instead of being a connoisseur of, say,

Renaissance painting or 20th-century literature,

or something really major, a micro connoisseur

is a subset, say, of foodies.

You're very good on bread, or coffee, or chocolate.

Everyday things.

And what this means is that people will pay supernormally high prices

for things that appear to be supernormally special.

It's not surprising that hipster style businesses quickly went under

the microscope of my friends in the marketing world.

Clients originally felt that hipsters were a kind of

interesting but eccentric and non-profitable minority.

They didn't see the benefit of the association.

What did you suggest they do?

I think we first of all suggested that they examine closely

the principles of hipsters. What is it they are trying to talk about?

Organic - how does that resonate with the consumer?

Very well. Sustainable - excellent with consumers.

More localised industries

and artisanal activities

to reinvigorate and revitalise the neighbourhood -

consumers love that.

Once Martin and his team had explained these ideas

to big business, they were quick to exploit these very lovable things.

Mainstream corporate marketeers have definitely clocked the hipster look.

They've been buying it up in job lots - or they've been faking it.

The hipster trend is absolutely everywhere now.

It's a funny mixture of urban chic and shantytown.

I think people have co-opted elements of hipsterism

because they can say "This is cool."

it just becomes a means by which

large organisations can sell a different look and attitude.

You now walk into a Pret A Manger,

and it's essentially got a bit of

this subculture going on now in their outlet.

So you can see how the mainstream has co-opted this look

and it is taking it to the world at large.

# Imitation

# Imitation... #

The interiors of quite a lot of fast food restaurants now are modelled on

sort of hipster lofts, so they have...

erm...

real or probably fake stripped brickwork walls,

apparently mismatched shabby chic furniture,

but probably no doubt produced on a mass scale but to look as if

it were vintage. So the aesthetic has permeated everywhere.

Just at the moment that trends like hipsterism hit the high street,

the pioneers, the originators, the early adopters will be saying,

"That's so over." But in my experience,

that's the point that it really starts motoring.

That's the moment when it goes from the Bauhaus to our house,

as Tom Wolfe immortally said. That's when it gets to you and me.

And our coffee's a Guatemalan single origin speciality.

So you've got flavour notes there of milk chocolate and orange.

Even Britain's biggest retailer, Tesco,

part-owns a rather hipster-style high street coffee chain,

complete with the stripped-back aesthetic.

You know, the industrialised lighting, distressed wood table,

the Edison light bulb, the chalk blackboard - in themselves,

business didn't understand that,

but when you can associate profit with it...

Did it give people a kit to look hipster-ish?

I think you can give people... Unfortunately...

Did you give your clients a kit to look hipster-ish?

No. I think what you try to do is...

-Somebody did!

-Somebody did.

You can see some hipster effects on high streets in the country.

But the biggest changes are concentrated

in post-industrial parts of big cities.

This process is part of that unrelenting thing

called gentrification.

We've already seen in the rougher suburbs of New York

that when the artistes, graphic designers, bakers,

brewers and coffee makers moved in,

the area was transformed by the creative class.

This has been mirrored in London's Shoreditch.

At first, the effect is actually rather nice -

the food, the look, the coffee and the fizzy drinks.

It's all rather wholesome and tasty, if you like that kind of thing.

It feels good.

# ..That this joint is to hip for me... #

I think being a hipster is all about having a nice life.

It's going into a coffee shop with your Mac and sitting down

and working there all morning with your matching iPhone.

It's probably having a fixed wheel bike as well.

They do sort of flock together. They are a collective.

And where one lives, lots of them live, and you find them living

in these sort of utopian enclaves,

where all of their children are brought up together,

where there's a farmers' market that they all go to every week

and it is a real utopia if you go to certain bits of Hackney.

They've got it sorted out in a lovely way.

And you said that without a trace of topspin.

You said it is if you might mean it.

Well, but this is the thing about hipsters,

their lives are nice.

That's why they come in for such a lot of flak, I think.

They are a bunch of people who have worked out what is pleasant,

and they happen to be able to afford it, and so they've gone for it.

Now, here's the difficult bit.

As the hipsters were having their nice lives, the estate agents

and developers - very different people - quickly got in on the act.

Building owners and developers gradually began to realise, hey,

this could be turned into some very expensive housing.

Estate agents follow artists

like seagulls follow fishing boats.

That's where the money's going to be next,

because that's where the fashion is going

and that's where aspirational people will want to live.

Once upon a time there WERE artists - at least arty types -

but the movement quickly mainlined into entrepreneurism.

In Williamsburg,

one of those loftish apartments that were so run-down 20 years ago

will cost you 3 million and up now.

It's a similar story in London's Shoreditch.

So the moral seems to be if you want to make a lot of money,

buy a dump in the next hipster land, and it'll make you a fortune.

I think, looking back,

if you ask yourself why did this modern hipster moment happen

exactly when it did,

it turns out really to have to do with money.

The flow of global capital

into so-called global cities, London, New York...

Because those places, specifically real estate in those places,

came to seem like safe investments.

And of course, Shoreditch is just yards away from the shiny towers

of the City of London.

And the area has become a popular hipster-themed tourist destination.

One of the places those visitors love is the Cereal Killer Cafe

in Brick Lane.

But for some, it's come to represent a selling-out

of what was once a working-class neighbourhood.

In September 2015, 200 anti-gentrification

class war activists targeted the cafe,

blaming hipsters for the rising inequality in East London.

Wearing pig's head masks,

they daubed the word "scum" on the shop window.

This is a new thing now, but that was actually dragged in front

of the door to barricade the door closed, because people were trying

to get in. The customers had actually barricaded themselves in.

What conclusions did you draw from that experience?

They attacked us because they see us as...

the faces of "hipsters" in East London.

They knew if they attacked us they would get press about it,

and they were absolutely right.

Possibly one of the things that people have got against you

is that, whatever you do,

you're part of the onward advance of gentrification

in a formerly working-class area.

The thing is, I've spoke to people who lived here

sort of all their lives and they said 20 years ago,

this place was a shithole. So when these artists and stuff moved in...

-They've made it better?

-Yeah.

Well, there's pros and cons about gentrification,

I can understand that.

But, essentially, where we come from in Belfast,

you don't have gentrified areas,

most people wouldn't have heard of that. In Belfast it's like,

there was a bit of a shitty area

and now it's a nice area. It's a nice place to go.

And that's a good thing.

You can see their point, can't you?

Why should they be hammered for doing something people enjoy?

Hipsters never really said they were aiming to change the world.

They just meant to live a nicer life, or start a nice business.

Today, the line between being a rebel

and being a fundamental conformist has got rather blurred.

Just about looks - except for the inequality debate.

Hipsters don't go there.

What we call a hipster is usually somebody going about their life

in a pretty unthreatening way.

It seems more like a consumer culture than a counterculture.

So when the marketeers spotted them, they packaged the hipster lifestyle

into something that could be sold to the rest of us rather fast.

And you could say it's become one of

the most successful consumer movements ever.

Will they leave a great literature,

will they leave a distinctive musical genre?

Will they leave artworks that have never been done before,

and won't be done again?

This hipster culture - is it counterculture, is it subculture,

or is it consumer culture?

And I would have to say that it seems like consumer culture to me

because, especially nowadays, so much of it is

orientated around products.

But it's not ALL been bad.

I think the hipster legacy is more focused on environmental policies.

I think it's a slightly different version of consumer society.

One that cares slightly more about the origin of products and feels

a certain amount of consumer guilt as well.

They actually have kick-started

a whole return to making cities civilised again.

To making them about community values,

and to making our public spaces less bland and

kind of cookie-cut corporatism.

So in some ways they've started a process of re-engagement,

and reopened the debate about politics, social space, communities,

that I fear we haven't had for the past decade.

So what did the hipsters ever do for us?

Well, they gave us better craft beers, and better coffee,

and better bean-to-bar chocolate, and better sourdough toasties.

But it all came at a price.

And they regenerated neighbourhoods.

But that came at a price, too.

Higher property prices.

Some winners, some losers.

We're ALL a bit hipster now.

But meanwhile, out there,

the unremitting search for the new frontiers of cool,

that constantly moving target, just goes on.