2nd Presentation

For my second presentation I wanted to focus on Conquest of Cool by Thomas Frank. I thought it would be interesting to examine whether the issues Frank talks about in his study are at all applicable to the fashion or advertising industry today. In his study Frank claims that the business world and the counter-culture world did not follow a basic cooptation theory but rather that the business world actually embraced the values and images of the counter-culture--that in fact advertising and menswear enjoyed a kind of "hip" revolution of their own. Since we explored these theories at a rather in depth level in class, i thought it might be interesting to look at the advertising and fashion industry today and see if a similar relationship exists. While i don't think its any secret that advertisers look for trends that are "hip" and "cool" in order to move products, Frank was attempting to show that advertisers could in fact predict these trends--and didn't merely adopt counter-culture values but in fact helped to shape them. While looking around for information on today's fashion industry i found an article in Forbes about the rise of "hipster" culture and its influence on the industry. The article points out that Marc Jacobs (the designer) draws on his experience as a hipster to draw in older and younger crowds; he is essentially what Frank is talking about in his study--members of the business class anticipating and encouraging the creation of a counter-culture movement.

Ultimately the article points to the fact that "hipsters" are the new counter-culture movement--and coincidentally they are also the children of the "baby boomers" who Frank examines in his book.

The article is HERE