Dan's Papers - August 10, 2007 - The Hamptons Hipster

Everyday, the Hampton Jitney delivers chic New York City residents from their modern apartments in Manhattan to the more natural albeit equally expensive homes in the Hamptons. And while the furthest downtown the bus picks up is 40th & 3rd (plus some newly added Brooklyn locations), the bus is bound to get some New York City hipsters in its well air-conditioned seats - this is New York, after all, where you can hardly walk below Union Square without running into the hackneyed skinny jeans, vintage t-shirts and rare, ridiculous sneakers. While hipsters beat the heat in American Apparel track shorts and white, v-neck t-shirts, one might expect that they'd face a dearth of shopping options on the sophisticated Hamptons' Main Streets - but one would be wrong. Out east, there is a bevy of "irony" to be had as well as a dangerously high number of outlets with their sights set on hipsters (aren't we supposed to be real people in the Hamptons?). Well, I sigh, but get your white wayfarers on - we're going shopping.

While you likely won't find any classic, Kamus-reading, Buddy Holly glasses - wearing music connoisseur hipsters anywhere in the area, East Hampton's Blue & Cream is the East End outfitter of the newly emerging populace of Style Hipsters. Style hipsters are like celebrities (usually more like "local celebrities," and often more like "not celebrities at all, but would like to think of themselves that way") who have deemed themselves too cool for the popular kids. Blue & Cream is the perfect place for their shopping needs because it sells some variations of "streetwear," a new form of stylistic pretension. Streetwear is essentially homemade brands of urban clothing that is really, really expensive because it is "streetwear," and it is really, really ridiculous because nobody recognizes "streetwear" as "streetwear" except for those who wear it (which is a very small minority of even the hippest populations). Hamptons local brand LOLA and emerging fashion favorite Travota sell their freshest t-shirts alongside rare Nike dunks in this small, stylish boutique where fashionistas in white dresses smoke cigarettes outside. A Southampton outlet of the store opened last year as well, selling styles for skateboarders, and with the '90s coming back skateboarding is the hippest sport, sartorially speaking. Similarly, down the block, Scoop and Scoop Beach sell the trendiest digs for the guys, gays and girls, and while one can find enough credible, cool clothing in the stores to walk away feeling satisfied, the whole trendy Sienna Miller style hipster movement is quickly becoming deeply unhip. In New York, a hipster should set the trends, not follow them.

But even the more classic, Seth Cohen hipster can't seem to let go of the vintage t-shirts. And while there are no Beacon's Closets in the area (Williamsburg's warehouse of vintage hip t-shirts, reasonably priced), there are a few hidden gems. A small thrift store behind the Big Olaf down the wharf in Sag Harbor is open late at night, selling legitimate men's and women's vintage clothing from every era. Designer duds from every decade are hung alongside early 90s clothing that is sometimes so heinous it just might be cool. The store is a hidden stockpile of original looks where girls can put together outfits of stonewashed denim skirts with thin, stringy club kid-looking undershirts over black bras. Even those merely dabbling in sartorial hipsterdom can find a funny t-shirt (like the Lady Smith Black Mambazo tour shirt hanging on the men's rack), an Old West oxford or perhaps an out of production designer suit.

Further out on the island in Montauk, the store that's been outfitting downtown New York City nightlife for decades opened an East End outlet last summer - Screaming Mimi's. Screaming Mimi's, moderately to expensively priced, hand picks the hippest vintage t-shirts, preppy track jackets, 70s skirts and 80s sunglasses. While MisShapes has yet to begin an East End version of its downtown hipster party, Screaming Mimi's in Montauk is the perfect place to pick up clothes that will set you slightly apart from the rest of the Main Street crop.

So, for the Hamptons hipster, there are options. But if you want to be truly ahead of the crowds, I'd say, while out east, indulge in Ralph Lauren, J. Crew and all the Southampton shops selling preppy clothes for the well coiffed. Buy yourself a pair of short Nantucket reds! The 50s and 60s are coming back in full force and in short shorts, preppy polos and perhaps plastic aviators, you can smile and tell the Look Book it's for irony. And that would be hip.