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Why Hipsters Bastardising Working Class Fashion Is A Joke
The clothes of the working classes are not a costume or a piece of satire. So please stop treating them like they are.
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I was recently on the Overground from Hoxton to New Cross when a girl in a Burberry check windbreaker, grey adidas trackies and Reebok workouts sat next to me. It was leading up to Halloween and I wasn’t sure whether this was a serious outfit or just a bit of an offensive joke, but as we pulled through the next station one of her friends got on in an equally as offensive outfit. The two of them squawked in their shrill middle-upper-class voices as their sovereign rings and gold chains clinked in time to the train. I even heard one of them describe how “jokes” it was that their mate had bought an ounce of weed and how they were “totes going to get blazed”. I felt a bit sick.
These girls and their pseudo-estate outfits were too much. Their decision to ironically wear clothes that were once associated with the working classes spoke volumes about what is wrong with fashion and it’s followers. The adulation and piss-takery of working class culture has gone too far.
While covering yourself in the latest trend items doesn’t say a great deal about you, certain styles are intrinsically linked to cultures with roots deeper than the trainers on your feet, and those clothes should be left to those who are a part of that culture.
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As someone who lived in Liverpool for several years before moving down to London (bad move, I know), I became pretty accustomed to scally culture in its truest form. And while I was a million miles away from it personally, being someone who came to the city as a student, I had a lot of respect for the guys who were willing to blow a couple of hundred quid buying a trackie. I learned to appreciate their clothes, but would personally never copy them. Not only because I would look like a bit of a tit going into my English Literature lectures wearing a bum bag and a MaStrum jacket, but because it just wasn’t my culture to mimic. These guys weren’t doing it because they thought it was cool or ironic, or as a form of abstract satire. They were doing it because it gave them their sense of personality and identity.
Dressing the part certainly doesn’t mean you fit the part. If you dressed like a mid-90s rapper but only liked N-Dubz and Eminem you would be chastisised for being a bit of a prick. Just as if you start wearing Stone Island jackets, Hugo Boss polos or Air Max’s, yet you’ve never set foot on a terrace or an estate, you should be told to go home and change. As this certainly isn’t a way for you to express yourself, you’re just making it into a craze, something you and your mates can wear for a couple of months before ditching it in favour of the next ironic socio-political statement piece. (I’ve heard dressing like an Hasidic Jew is going to be the next craze. Better start growing your hair and beards, boys.)
Clothes are a way for you to express yourself, your beliefs, influences and your roots, not a quick way to fetishise something you were never a part of. Leave the clobber to those who appreciate it.
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COMMENTS
Does it cut both ways? Should football lads be told to put away their italian sailing wear because they've never set foot on the Med?
Bit like people on Towie dressing like Victoriana English gents when they are anything but...
Think the reason this has a distasteful edge over casuals in sailing gear is because a) there's genuine appreciation of craftsmanship involved with lads buying those labels and b) as far as I know sailors have never faced years of exploitation and mockery at the hands of those now appropriating their dress sense
"I had a lot of respect for the guys who were willing to blow a couple of hundred quid buying a trackie." LOL. I didn't/don't. They're obviously dickheads. This is a bit out of date, as well. Hipsters now are prodigiously bearded and dress like 1900s mill workers. Silly posh girls have always loved putting on big hoop earrings and trackies and pretending they're "Chanel from the estate". From pretentious East London to affluent West, you'll see loads of these creatures.
Trackies and trainers? Didn't realise that was fashion! Thought it was a combination of bad taste and no money!!
Get your point, but linking labels like MaStrum with trackies and bum bags proves that you don't really know that much about working class fashion yourself I'm afraid. Plenty of student casuals too, just cause you like dressing up for the football doesn't mean you can't have a brain. A well meaning but ultimately flawed article.
I thought hipsters were going for the ''lumberjack'' look these days, but in much tighter trousers.
Who gives a fuck what people wear? Get a grip.
'Clothes are a way for you to express yourself, your beliefs, influences and your roots, not a quick way to fetishise something you were never a part of' True, these girls mentioned in the article sound like nobs who are doing the latter, but normally how would you really tell? I'm white, female and middle class and grew up in the midlands. My influences from a young age have been from the 80s, 90s and from black culture, hip hop etc. So what I am influenced by is not the same as my roots, though that might work its way in somewhere. Am I wrong too because I'm not 'part of' those things? Its a fine line, but if you style yourself well and you're not just following a trend it shouldn't look like you're wearing a costume. So fair point, but it is possible to draw inspiration and feel more connected to a culture that is supposedly below you on the food chain.
This article is a joke surely? Although I didn't laugh. It was quite painful reading it. P.S - Sorry Tom, but it was.
Will Grace actually makes a good observation in this article. I lived in the multi socio-economic London suburb of Clapham for many years and I noticed something akin to this myself.. You'd see lot of these 'posh' middle class girls going through a rebellion phase, defying mummy and daddy and hanging with a more lower working class crowd. This included swapping their lovely dresses from Hobbs and Jigsaw for a hoodie from JD. And their Russell and Bromley heels would be substituted for a pair of Nike moonboots from Foot Locker! We've all known about the rock chick phenomenon well this is the rock chick's younger sister...The Gangsta' chick!! Of course it doesn't last forever, eventually it all comes to a juncture when Toby and Hugo return from Oxbridge, get that job at Rothschilds or Merrill Lynch and everything that goes with it!! The 4 bed Victorian townhouse running off Northcote Road with it's trendy bars and bistro's looks much more tempting than the shabby flat on the Winstanley estate with it's 24/7 hip hop bedlam up the road.
I'm sure the working class aren't boring enough to care about cultural appropriation
SABOTAGE
