Chilean artist Fab Ciraolo illustrates hazy, candy-colored images of ’80s cartoon heroes lounging around in their finest vintage garb. Hipster-esque versions of television’s most-loved characters from shows like He-Man, Thundercats, Rainbow Brite, and Jem are decked out in plaids and florals for the amusing series Old School Heroes. If you’ve ever wanted to see what an old-timey He-Man looks like while he golfs on Sundays with Duncan or what She-Ra might wear out shopping with her girls Frosta, Castaspella, and Mermista, click through our slide show for more.
Yesterday, The Washington Post ran a 2,000-odd word style piece by Ned Martel entitled “Are Hipster Glasses Over? How They Went from Chic to Weak.” Martel begins what will soon become a borderline rant by reporting a story in which White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked about his new spectacles, ostensibly during a press conference in which they should have been talking about, oh, unemployment or national security or something boring like that:
After a middling attempt at humor (“The better to see you with”) and flattery (“You guys look great, actually”), Carney settled on humility, pleading that his new square-rimmed, big-lensed, chunky-framed glasses were dictated by “the ravages of age.”
No luck. “But they’re hipster,” a reporter retorted.
“Really?” Carney said. “I thought they were sort of retro-nerdy.”
Carney lost the glasses two weeks later, and Martel calls foul, sniffing at the official “absent-minded dad tale,” and instead suggesting that Carney’s (incredibly normal-looking) glasses were deemed too ‘scary’ for him to sport. Martel goes on to bemoan the idea of glasses as fashion pieces, claiming that “decades ago, everyone who got glasses got the same pair. Glasses were just glasses — a tool, not a statement. Think of NASA Mission Control, with its many bespectacled rocket scientists in Houston evaluating The Problem. Today’s problem is not what we’re seeing with glasses, but what we’re saying with them. Eyewear has become me-wear.” We’re pretty sure even decades ago, people had different styles of eyewear. Unless — how many decades are we talking?
We’ll admit it: When we saw the headline “Hogwarts Hipsters,” we sighed a bit. But we couldn’t help but click on these illustrations by deviantART’s Rotae of Harry Potter and friends dressed up like Portlandia extras. Maybe it’s their low-key, tan hues or the endearing caricatures or Hermione’s wonderful caption (“I chose the invisibility cloak because it totally represents my way of life”) or just its innate superiority to Hipster Ariel. Whatever the reason, we enjoy these and hope you do, too. If you don’t, we’re sure you’ll have something to say in the comments.
This week, the kind folks over at It’s Nice That clued us into the work of Sophie Blackall, a Brooklyn-based artist who recently completed a project illustrating a collection of Craigslist Missed Connections postings, ranging from the painfully sweet to the delightfully strange. Blackall’s work is beautiful and dreamlike, and we love the places her imagination goes with just the limited words of sometimes dashed-off postings. Her drawings have been compiled into a book coming out September 22, which you can pre-order here. Or you can even buy individual prints from her Etsy page. Click through to see some of our favorites, and make sure to check out Blackall’s website for more. And of course, if you see yourself here, let us know!
The folks at Salty Waffle call the “Gen Y Hipster” Get Satisfaction infographic below, which claims to explain young people’s buying habits, “fun.” Us? As members of the elusive Gen Y, we find it more than a little condescending — and also potentially misleading. It pairs snarky, entirely non-factual observations (“Expensive accessory to legitimize claims of creativity,” “Skinny jeans necessitate external placement of jeans”) with dubious statistics that lack citation (30 percent of Gen Y is apparently made up of “Creators and Trend Setters,” while 57 and 54 percent are “Joiners” and “Spectators,” respectively). Meanwhile, what’s the deal with the “knit cap hides rising hairline under guise of youthful fashion” crack? First of all, 1993 called, and it wants its winter-hats-all-year trend back. Also, if we’re supposed to be talking about people under 30, are receding hairlines really a defining concern? Witness the mess after the jump.
In case you haven’t heard, today is National Punch a Hipster Day. According to Facebook, almost 10,000 people attending — which sounds like bad news for 20-somethings on bikes wearing feather headdresses. Since we don’t condone violence and hope to dissuade you from wandering through Williamsburg or Silver Lake brandishing brass knuckles, we thought we’d draw your attention to ten famous hipsters who might make better targets. You know, if you have to punch anyone. Which you don’t. OK?
Even die hard hipsters have got to grow up sometime. And by ‘grow up’ we mean ‘start listening to boring dinner party music.’ But there is a middle ground — hipster orchestra Jingle Punks, who play surprisingly soothing versions of the indie rock anthems you know and love. As Jingle Punks founder Jared Gutstadt told FreeWilliamsburg, “It’s a simple concept… We took songs from the American Hipster songbook (MGMT, Strokes, White Stripes) and re-imagined them as arrangements for a civilized dinner party for the transitioning adult Hipster. Introducing – The Jingle Punks Hipster Orchestra which is our favorite “hipster approved” songs washed through the Mark Mothersbaugh filter.” Intrigued? Ready to wear a collared shirt over those skinny jeans? Click through to see a few of our favorite videos from the group, and check them out live at the Soho House NYC on June 12.
Editor’s note: Each Friday, our internet-savvy friends over at BuzzFeed curate a post for us that’s filled with links to some of their favorite items on the web that week. Enjoy!
This week, using Google Insights, we measured the regional interest in the term “hipster” and found out that Minnesota was the most hipster state in the US, just ahead of New York and Oregon.
Our friends at BuzzFeed have a theory: “A hipster is just a Brooklynite who wishes they were from Minnesota because it’s ‘more real,’ while genuine Minnesotans are exempt from the label.” The proof, such as it is, lies in the graph above, which shows that — despite having 1/3 of New York’s population — Minnesota leads the nation in searches for the word “hipster.” BuzzFeed’s rather enlightening post goes on to round up some more evidence of the state’s hidden hipster appeal. For our part, we’re just shocked at how popular Hipster Hitler has become.
