During this past year I cast a regal eye across the nation, capital, and Clapham Commonwealth and saw one of diversity, adversity, community and crisis. It would be easy to fill this speech with shapeless and generic low-calorie phrases that condescend themselves onto your plebeian shoulders like dandruff sprinkled before a wind machine, but today one chooses real topics and issues on Christmas Day: the abuse and mistreatment of ‘The Hipster’, Technology’s War on Love and Gentrification as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Whilst for my husband and I this year has been one of colonic colonial discovery and triumph, for “The Hipster” it has been nothing short of an anus horribilus. Why does one despise the hipster so? Should we not celebrate the once-was-lost-but-now-have-found bearded gentleman? Should we not embrace the cable knit and the corduroy? Rejoice the spinning wheel. Delight the potters kiln. Bring me my knitting needles. But more importantly does not the hipster represent a pacifistic demolition of Grayson Perry’s aggressive “Great White Male”? Was not my father George V, the original hipster?
Let us celebrate this rare occasion when the middle classes have found themselves a fashion, a lifestyle. Gone is the never-ending winter of Simon Cowell and flat-packed IKEA ideals. Step forward rare vinyl releases, turned wood and the fair trade flat white. Fashion is almost always born of the gutter and then adopted by the idea-thin rich. It’s so rare that the silent middle-classes create something of their own, instead of cowering in the shadow of an urban low-slung jean or the Sloane Ranger’s scarlet chino. In their wildflower meadows, “The Hipster” now enjoys parsnip-cut-sack-cloth breeches or ballet pumps. What hipster-bashers brand as homogeny is in fact a light-hearted solidarity. Join them! Thrown down the razor blade! Mount the tandem! Power the lathe!
And so one turns away from the artisanal to the technological. Lo! The two-headed beast chomping voraciously at the spaghetti; the threads which join us as people. Grindr and Tindr! Fascist faceless dictators promising quick-fire relationships and the constant over-shopping of the soul. The sweet peal of wedding bells has been drowned out by the buzz of push notification alerts, summoning us to our emotional guillotine. And for what? A tediously miserable half Nandos chicken for two on a date in Dalston. Help yourself to cutlery, pick your sauce and hope to blind Jesus that the chilli sauce won’t sting as much as the puss dripping from your diseased loins a week or two later. Date 2? 10.45, Tuesday, Dean Street GUM!
Have we lost our desire, nay our very ability to meet, converse, copulate? As I sit beside my Royal Consort, upon the satin sheets of our regal bed, flicking trough i-D Magazine for old photographs of myself, I shed a tear for London’s heroes, fighting on the frontline of Grindr; heroine’s negotiating a war on Tindr. Then I gaze at my husband and wonder if ‘Big Blk BB Brad’ is still 365 feet away and ready for some NSA P&P?
Which brings me to the centrepiece of this festive speech: Decay. London’s loss of decadence (which lies not in her grandeur, but in her decay). London is losing its sleaze! And if it wasn’t for us, the royal family, there’d be hardly an ounce of sleaze left.Soho, previously seething with ripped fishnets and strap-ons is now wall-to-wall pre-prepared Pret-A-Manger turkey and cranberry sandwiches. The only cheeky wrap you’ll be buying after hours through a hatch on Denmark Street is full of falafel and hummus! Snakebites give way to fro-yos! Oh Soho! We are at the risk of throwing away the lusty beating of our hearts for the price of a reheated meatball sub.
And in my provinces, Hackney, Peckham, Walthamstow. I stop at derelict buildings and try to peak through their boarded-up windows. Infusing myself with the wonderful stench of decay. Dereliction now dwarfed by glass castles with their security check moats and swipe card portcullises with names such as Avant Garde Tower (even Buckingham Palace herself prides herself on a damp patch or two). No wonder everyone’s running to Tottenham.As the city gets covered in swathes of sparkling marble and mirrored glass like some vast Coldharbour Lane manicure, will we lose the festering grime under the finger nails from whence our trolling spirits gorge, feed and celebrate?
We are at war! Our cultural identity is under threat. The threads of our relationships are at risk of tearing. We turn on ourselves for wearing out-of-season suede shoes. Touch screen technology is obliterating what we once “felt”. As my dear, dear friend and confidant John Sizzle so succinctly put it, “The next fucker who asks me if they can charge their vape in my DJ booth is going to get a Prosecco cork in their fucking eye.” Beauty is imperfection, it doesn’t need a wifi connection, beauty is unplugged. Follow me on Instragram and I’ll show you.
And so, as I hang the final bauble on my tree, I see not a reflection of myself but a fish-eyed promise of our future. A promise of a place where all are celebrated whether they wear home spun yarns or discount man-made flibres; where we’re real, living, breathing, three-dimensional human beings with feelings, not just statistics. A promise of a bit of good-old-Oom-Pah-Pah-dancing-on-tables-London-frayed-at-the-edges-nonsense. For 2015, we all need to unplug, switch off and reach out.
Credits
Text Jonny Woo
Photography Shawn Mortensen
Styling James Jeanette
Clock and shoes Alexander McQueen. Jumpsuit Lyall Hakaria. Neck piece Nasir Mazhar. Necklace Liria Pristine.
[The Beautiful Issue, no. 295, January 2009]