Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables

Well, I went to Urban Outfitters for the first time today.

Heather was in town to buy a wedding dress, (with very specific, un-weddingy requirements, and to cover a growing pregnant belly) and we headed towards Cherry Creek. We are NOT Cherry Creek kind of girls, but the hip maternity shops are there, so that's what we tried. After a lovely happy hour meal at Hapa, we wandered towards Urban Outfitters where Heather had earlier spotted a likely candidate.

While a quick glance at my mode of dress might identify me as an "aging hipster" (or bag lady, if you prefer), I've never really had enough money to truly qualify in hipster-dom. So much of being a hipster has to do with purchased accoutrements, as though one might adorn oneself in a chosen identity that has no bearing on any actual personality traits or individuality. Urban Outfitters is the high church of rich-kid hipsterdom, bestowing the "look" of being, for lack of a better word, "alternative" without having to actually dirty oneself achieving said look. The pre-ripped jeans, the pre-faded and obscurely referenced t-shirt, the pre-creased trucker hat -- these are the marks of today's ironic urban hipster, who fails to see the irony in paying exorbitant sums for the afore-mentioned wear and tear. The entire point seems to be to emulate the thrift-store look that is pioneered by poor kids with individualized tastes, while at the same time making a status symbol out of the specificity of the look. It's not enough to have a pair of jeans with holes in them after all -- they must be the right jeans, with the right holes. Last season's holes just won't do. An entirely new set of holey jeans must be purchased, and god forbid you do any physical labor in those jeans that might make any untoward holes in un-cool places.

And not only are the clothes expensive, but they're cheaply made and don't seem to come in any size but ruthlessly skinny. And some of the things for the home are again, rip-offs of easily found vintage items that populate thrift stores coast to coast. Worst of all, they mock the very idea of the handmade, by emulating the artists & designers in the recent craft movement with cheap Chinese knock-offs utilizing a quaintly sanitized unevenness, as though the designation of "hand made" is merely a set of pre-planned irregularities meant to mimic an amateur crudeness.

When I first walked in, I was dazzled -- why, there are "cool" things in a mall store! They even had the Gorillaz vinyl figurines I've been drooling over at Plastic Chapel! But after a few minutes of consumerist dazzle, I realized that most of the crap in there is merely recycled ideas and cheap Chinese labor. Within ten minutes the romance was over.

The roots of all this "alternative, hipster" style are firmly planted in the dirt of punk rock, the grungy, DIY aesthetic that I came to flourish in. And I catch a whiff of the cranky old lady in me when I think, "By God, when I was a kid we didn't have no Hot Topic! We cut our own hair, died it with kool-aid and teased it into liberty spikes with Extra-Super-Hold blue-haired Aqua Net! We made our own clothes, altered thrift store finds, pierced whatever we could think to pierce with a needle, some cork, and a shot of whiskey. And not any Knob Creek or fancy shit like that -- we drank Mad Dog, not Appletinis. And we liked it like that!" And while my particular version of trudging 8 miles to school in the snow may be less traditional, it's not just mistrust of the under-30 set or a version of "those-kids-today". It's deeper than that.

Because it boiled down to self-expression, a forging of one's individual, personal style. Yeah, there were more than enough Mods with targets on their trench-coats and mohawked boys with the stereotypical A-for-Anarchy emblazoned on their backs -- not everyone succeeded at the task of being an individual. But it took true creativity to fashion this look from thrift-store-finds and hand-me-downs, especially in a cowtown in the mid-80's. Punk was dead by the time it reached Denver, but we breathed it in like a life-force anyway, channeling our rage and energy into bands and 'zines and fashion that got us beat up and spit upon.

We couldn't buy our identities, because that store didn't exist. (Although some among us began to open those stores -- Imi Jimi, Fashion Disaster, Fashionation -- a couple of which are still open to this day.) When I see some young kid walking down the street in his twee little mohawk and Hot Topic gear, it makes me a little sad. Sad that he's not forging his own way, just regurgitating hand-made ideas of twenty-plus years ago and listening to bands that broke up before he was born. But only a little sad. The rest of me wants to kick him in the groin and laugh my ass off, because that's punk, baby. You think you're a rebel, bitch?

At his age, it would never occur to me to try to replicate the styles of the older generation. I hated hippies -- there's no way I would have been caught dead imitating one, aside from the occasional acid trip. And any over-coiffed rich kid with expensive gear was called a poseur, derided and sneered at for their lack of imagination. Mostly, I think these misguided kids are missing out -- they aren't participating in creating the culture of their own generation, but simply cutting and pasting an identity onto themselves that they think people find shocking, different. But it's little more than a uniform, about as shocking as nurse shoes or polyester tunics.

Punk is dead. And individuality is on life support.

Anarchy, anyone?