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If you don't choose naughty ranting, the alternative might be ever more rapidly recycled nostalgia. This is how everyone from Tony Bennett to Tom Jones and Wayne Newton -- all once the polar opposite of hip -- can qualify as hip, given time. But this approach presents the danger of not only turning the avant-garde into a permanent revival tent but also having old mistakes pop right back up. Of course, then you have to rationalize them. "The '70s clothes that are being rehashed are so incredibly ugly, so intentionally ugly, that they actually could be perceived as a rebellion against propriety," the designer Todd Oldham offers hopefully. "A rebellion against conventionally understood ways of dressing."
But scarcely has that rebellion been declared than someone else is declaring that the real rebellion is . . . conventionally understood ways of dressing. So this year's most up-to-the-minute design-wear house, X-Girl, owned by Kim Gordon of the rock band Sonic Youth, is hawking brightly colored tennis sweaters, polo shirts and floral-print shifts that hark back to the Lilly Pulitzers of the horsey set, circa 1973. "Our dresses are very country club," explains X-Girl's chief designer, Daisy Von Furth. "People are tired of finding the oldest, grungiest T shirt in a thrift store." She adds, "A lot of young people are rediscovering golf."
This kind of thing can give newness a bad name, even as we eagerly scarf it up -- in fact, because we eagerly scarf it up. "When a trend went out of style, we used to be forgiving of it and think it was quaint, like pink skirts with poodles and crew cuts with white socks," says Steve Hayden, chairman and CEO of BBDO Los Angeles and creator of the famous Orwellian Apple computer commercial that perked up the 1984 Super Bowl. "Now, we actually hate the last trend. It goes from the top of the chart to nothing."
Some people are still trying their best to patrol the borders of hip, keeping out the pretenders. No sooner was Evan Dando, lead singer of the Lemonheads, identified by MTV as the next sensitive stud-muffin than some anti-fans started Die Evan Dando, Die, an anti-fan magazine. "I have nothing against teen idols. It's just that he was so publicist-ejaculated," says publisher-editor (and most other titles) Jeff Fox. "He was being forced down the throats of the American public as hip, and I couldn't take it anymore."
Such healthy cynicism about media manipulation may be a sign that hipness is still alive. Did we mention that Jeff Fox has been scarfed up already? A hip ad exec is bankrolling him to edit a hip magazine. This is where we came in.