The 18th century Dandies – history and literature will tell you, were, amongst other things, very much about cultivating equal parts extravagant fashion, an air of careless richesse (inherited, stolen or simulated), a flair for intellectual jousting, a taste for more or less refined melancholy (often dangerously perching on downright whining) and an Balzacian, self-reproaching, emotional detachment. Being dandy was about being rebellious in style. And one chose whatever “style” said rebellion would be best expressed in. A proper Dandy seemed not to care how many people he offended, but at the same time could not exist without the scandalised crowd – so a sly eye on the effects was vital. The paradox between the two is what allowed the Dandy his substance.

Much like the hipsters of today then, right? The ones we see carefully leading their fixed gear bicycles (no proper hipster would ever try riding it in public – imagine the shame and loss of prestige would it be formally known that said person actually hasn’t understood the physics of it) to the ecologically correct grocery store – certainly by way of just-right-dirty-cafe (of the not-so-franchise-variety) and wearing the Ultimate Ironic T-shirt.

They’re also about fashion, in an unsavoury, unfashion-i-dont-care-way. They’re also about cultivating the detached emotion while outwardly exhibiting “happiness”, or “irony” or some other, easily simulated emotion that in no way has to be explained save the fact that it exists. I’m sure you know the kind. At least if you live in a fairly large city. Large enough to allow bike lanes and several cafes.

How come then that absolutely nothing – a big, dry hollow zero – seems to come out of the Hipster Movement whereas its 18th century counterpart managed to produce a very interesting body of work? No great literature, no amazing poetry, no worthwhile music, no agenda except for the adopted one, no formal stance on the Arts, no material that analyses anything save itself?

Worse still – an intellectual vacuum is created where the modern hipster will leave behind him (or her, though hipster females tend to teeter on the fine edge between salope and chienne thus placing them in another category altogether – that of the unpaid sex worker) – a seemingly endless wake of “ironic” photography portraying their disdain for everyone and everything, huge bar bills, flavourless and egocentric blog posts and just about any other thing that will record how it is to be young and carefree.

Apart from the lack of acumen, there is also one other distinct difference between the dandy of today and of yore: The modern variety suffers from an almost hostile view towards truth and reason. The fake is better than the real, the imagined and invented is valued above the honest. There were tendencies towards this with the 18th century crowd as well – but never due to what I presume are the modern reasons of lack of effort, discipline and perhaps even something more unflattering: the simple fact that, frankly, most modern hipster-dandies have in their lifetimes achieved the sum total of a staggering nothing. No wonder that they prefer the fluffy comfort of imagined, pink clouds. Learning, doing, and achieving things is after all rather hard work. And that is not a modern concept at all.

A Swedish blog, Highbrow (sic!) portrays this beautifully in a (presumably) meta-ironic post. A picture of a typical hipster nobody taken somewhere in a public place (is it a bar?) – along with the caption: “What are you?”, followed by the laconic answer, “I’m young”.

On the money. You’re young. And nothing else. At all. Presumably ever – as young doesn’t really denote an actual age anymore. Though I’d agree that by and large, that’s a good thing – if you’re prepared to look past the sad fact that people are likely to live longer and thus cause far more nuisance that they would had their lives ended sooner.

Aforementioned blog also makes elegantly crude fun of the hipster tendency to associate himself with anything with even the smallest whiff of vintage academia, preferably of Ivy League variety. This is where the real comedy starts for people witnessing the movement and have any kind of decent education: The hollowed out shell of the modern dandy has taken every external attribute and matched it to no form of content except the recycling of one-liners, stolen ideas and a very brief understanding of what someone who in fact has an education should have a grasp of. In other words, purchasing a fixed gear bike and and a (ironic) tweed suit is likely to do a lot for your image – but next to nothing for your education. Yet, in our modern world – they are virtually interchangeable.

At least as long as the impostor is not challenged with having to display the knowledge of the air he pretends. Which, in turn, is not likely to happen since modern dandies are (much like their historical counterparts) a rather unsociable lot and prefer to rub backs with like minded, nay, like-looking, individuals.

True comedy indeed, then: The text book equivalent of the Imbecile (or courtly Fool), walking in the clothes of the Scholar. And it is as (involuntarily) funny, as it is inevitable.

Branding – the branch of marketing concerned with creating an image – is constantly looking for new areas to exploit and new victims on which to re-package and furnish ready-wear and other such, very important consumer trinkets. While certainly healthy for the GNP – assumably highly detrimental to both mind and (actual) academia alike. Point illustrated in one of more misled campaigns of the Swedish advertising year: The (ehum) – rowing race between two of the more expensive Swedish private schools that for lack of actual academic merit shall stay nameless (a state probably constant until the inevitable collapse of the solar system) – sponsored by the Swedish impostor brand: Gant.

True meta-comedy indeed: Two sets of teams, as furnished economically as lacking in talent and wit – sponsored by a brand who’s marketing directors are presumably wetting their chinos by the prospect of upmarketing stale apparel previously favoured by 80-something’s to a younger, more discerning crowd. All neatly coloured in the shades of English rowing teams of former times.

It has, incidentally, previously been argued that Gant’s wear is ideal for older men since the hues in which the clothes are produced are second to none in hiding the consequences of a prostate problem. Spelling it out: Pee yourself in a pair of Gant chinos and your mates are none the wiser.

Though one really can’t blame Gant. With a dying demographic, what is one to do? Apart from trying to peddle the stuff to someone else, of course. And as previously noted; it’s a charm for the Swedish GNP.

And so we come full circle. The market, being the market, catches a trend and fuels the already hollow hipster movement, throwing it a spin or two in the barrel of fashion and in turn producing a second generation of hipster, those that did not catch on in the first place – ending up with an even more colourless gang of sad customers, likely to reproduce the chain reaction even further down the economical food chain.

Brilliant!