While daughters look for that Diane von Furstenberg dress, their mothers are at home in brand new Chloé. Sons are sourcing old-school hip-hop and hair metal, while their dads are more than comfortable with Kanye West, the Darkness and Franz Ferdinand. Scissor Sisters, the Streets, Gap, Topshop, Monica Ali, Mark Haddon, text-messaging, downloading, Pizza Express and All Bar One have united everyone in one homogenous mass. Lou Reed has gone handbag house. Jeremy Vine loves Eminem.
There is no such thing as a generational divide any more. Even the traditional countercultural signifiers of drugs (dinner-party pills, anyone?), direct-action protest (a plethora of designer papooses at the anti-Iraq-war march) and sex (Sven bonking for Britain) are no longer delineated by age. At surface level, our cultural climate appears to be not only ageless, but agelessly credible. Youth culture has become leisure culture, and leisure culture has turned into a free-for-all. Everyone is invited.
So, how does genuine cool exist in this climate? Easy. By word of mouth. By a succession of secret style networks that are separating the wheat from the chaff. At one end of the spectrum, there are the hyperstyle networks, the Eltons and Davids through whom Victoria Beckham is but one degree of separation from Sam Taylor-Wood. At the other, there is a largely internet-based community of music, fashion and niche lifestyle fans swapping their intricate knowledge of any given subject. Word of mouth has become the only guarantor of genuine cachet.
“Everybody has access to so many things now, and we live in such a connected society, that your network of friends and contacts is one of the few ways of gaining reassurance,” says Billie Moseley of the trend-forecasting agency Headlight Vision. “It’s why (the online community) Friendster works so well. Everyone is connected by however many degrees of separation. People can protect their tribes.”
Tribalism isn’t simply the yawning trawl through thrift shops in the hunt for authenticity, itself at the tipping point between cool and cliché. It is about finding that brilliant something that nobody else has or knows about. It is about what you know and who you know. It is, above all else, about something that money can’t buy — access. This is the new underground. A place where limited editions, white labels, one-offs and addresses on the backs of hands congregate to explode the myth of monoculture.
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The Babyshambles parties in east London are a prime example. Made famous through the raging success of the Libertines, the Rhythm Factory venue in Whitchapel has become central to whole new subculture of friends, supporters and members of the other bands around them and their troubled hero, Pete Doherty. Nip down any night of the week, and if you’re dressed right and have the right attitude, you’re in. A band like the Others, the Paddingtons or the Rakes may end up gigging in your living room. Or you may simply have the night of your life.
There is still bags of stuff out there that people don’t know about, pockets of innovation beneath the shared experience. Some of it is elitist, like a new, limited-edition Hermès bag, or a party on P.Diddy’s yacht — and there is a new global networking website called asmallworld.net, which is strictly invitation only, and seems to have half the world’s aristocracy as members. But most of it is available to anyone with the gumption, energy, enthusiasm and taste to locate it. At any given hour you can instant-message those sparky hip-hop kids in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who fetishise Ralph Lauren gear exclusively from 1980 to 1983. You can engage with the Tokyo tribe that will ship over a manga comic or action figure that the geeks in Forbidden Planet have no idea about. Or you can find a rare Parisian glitch house record of which only 100 copies exist. Or a DJ mix tape, a pair of new Balenciaga socks, a road sign, whatever. This is a unique revenge for the homogeneity of high-street culture, club culture, everyman culture. What’s more, it is a people’s revolt.
“Networking” is, in a sense, too vulgar an expression for the new hierarchy of cultural zealots. These are the tastemakers who will have the correct handbag before it’s even known as such, a CD burnt and ripped from the internet before it has even made it to the marketing team at a record label, let alone the shops, and several invites to the best ad-hoc gatherings in town on a weekly basis.
Word of mouth is not about getting on guest lists. Who wants to go to a tacky West End celebrity hang-out, when celebrity is ten a penny and likely to comprise only Heat-ish noddies such as Lee from Blue, Jodie Marsh and one of the rubbish ones from Big Brother? Given a twist of fate, these people would be hanging out in Cheltenham All Bar One. Probably working there.
The new networks are about personal recommendation. It’s long been suggested that gang mentality has given way to cutural empathy; that everyone, essentially, is the same. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because there are no names for these quiet style networks, just because they aren’t called mods or rockers or punks or goths or acid teds, does not mean that they don’t exist. Tribalism is dead? Pah. It’s just becoming more tribal than ever.
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ONCE WAS COOL
You went to illegal raves off the M25
You loved the Stone Roses
Your trainers were Stan Smith shell toes
You ate risotto nero and rocket salad
You drank sea breezes and Volvic
You wore Gucci and Adidas Y3
You carried the Fendi baguette
You had a mobile and had just received your first e-mail
MONOCULTURE COOL
You’re on the guest list at Chinawhite
You love Franz Ferdinand
Your trainers are Nike Dunks
You eat sushi and anything carb-free
You drink Caiparinhas and smoothies
You wear Marc Jacobs and Topshop
You carry the Mirokami by Louis Vuitton
Your home page is Popbitch and your texting speed is 80wpm
WORD OF MOUTH COOL
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You stage guerrilla gigs in your front room
You love the Others
Your trainers are colour-your-own Adidas
You eat Sardinian bottarga from Cagliari
You drink Guinness and Bubble Tea
You wear pop socks bought in Tokyo
You already have the Corto Moltedo bag
You’re taking part in a live edible fashion installation on SHOWstudio.com