Hipster fashion

I don't have a problem with hipsters, first of all. I long ago realised that 'fashion' as a concept wasn't for me, but I don't want to intrude on anyone else's fun. Or what passes for fun when you're too cool to publicly emote. If you want to wear skinny jeans, leggings with elaborate prints on them, thick-framed glasses, t-shirts featuring animals that also wear thick-framed glasses – well, fair play to you. Well done on the impressively swoopy hair.

It is bewildering, though, isn't it? The way one particular style starts to pervade the media until an entire era has a definable Look. In the same way that some photos are instantly recognisable as being from the seventies, the images we're churning out in advertising and posting online all scream “I was taken in the twenty-tens!”, and there's nothing you can do about that. The very cut of your fringe betrays you.

I think what bothers me most is that people don't realise how temporary it all is. Twenty years from now, when aesthetic circuitry is the big thing, you'll still have a moustache tattooed on your index finger. Forty years from now, when fabric can be programmed to display whatever you dreamed about last night, you will still have a moustache tattooed on your finger. That doesn't bother some people, but I like the fact that some tattoo artists will only ink unique works. If you already know three people with a particular design, like it or not, you're joining a club. What would the club of people with moustachioed digits look like, I wonder? Would you want to be a part of it?

There's been a lot of debate over what exactly makes someone a hipster, and because humans can't cope with there being more than two kinds of people, I've helpfully decided where the line is. You're welcome. The schism is as follows:

Anyone who gets conspicuously, publicly excited about their interests is a geek; anyone too cool and reserved to do so is a hipster. There's a distancing from the moment in that attitude that's actually pretty sad, and more held back than laid back. If you're tempted to say that you preferred a band's early work because the alternative is to appear happy or unhappy at the music entering your earholes at that exact moment, you've detached too much.

I think you'll find a comments section below, if you want to say that I don't know what I'm talking about, and lord knows you'd be right to. I'm no expert. I'm just a victim of the times, like everybody else. It wasn't intentional - I'd been looking for non-skinny trousers for months, and eventually gave up. I bought the first tolerable item that looked like it would cover my legs, only to check the label after purchase to find that I was now the ashamed owner of a pair of jeggings.

That's how fashion works. It gets everywhere, until you have no choice but to succumb. I have girl boxers with bowler hats and monocles on, and I'm not sure I could tell you why; only that it seemed the least abhorrent option at the time.

And so the symbols of our time continue; repeating, duplicating and mutating, until every surface in sight is covered in owls with moustaches.