1. from The New Yorker
March 17, 1997
ANNALS OF STYLE
The Coolhunt
Who decides what's cool?
Certain kids in certain places--
and only the coolhunters know who they are.
by Malcolm Gladwell
1. had decided they didn't want shower sandals. DeeDee
the hundred-and-twenty- five- recalls, "I'm like, 'I'm telling
Baysie Wightman met dollar basketball sneaker with you, Baysie, this is going to
DeeDee Gordon, seventeen different kinds of hit. There are just too many
appropriately enough, on a high-technology materials and people wearing it. We have
coolhunt. It was 1992. colors and air-cushioned heels to make a shower sandal.' "
Baysie was a big shot for anymore. They wanted So Baysie, DeeDee, and a
Converse, and DeeDee, who simplicity and authenticity, designer came up with the
was barely twenty-one, was and Baysie picked up on that. idea of making a retro
running a very cool boutique She brought back the sneaker-sandal, cutting the
called Placid Planet, on Converse One Star, which was back off the One Star and
Newbury Street in Boston. a vulcanized, suède, low-top putting a thick outsole on it.
Baysie came in with a classic old-school sneaker It was huge, and, amazingly,
camera crew-one she often from the nineteen-seventies, it's still huge.
used when she was and, sure enough, the One
coolhunting-and said, "I've Star quickly became the Today, Baysie works for
been watching your store, signature shoe of the retro Reebok as general-
I've seen you, I've heard you era. Remember what Kurt merchandise manager-part
know what's up," because it Cobain was wearing in the of the team trying to return
was Baysie's job at Converse famous picture of him lying Reebok to the position it
to find people who knew dead on the ground after enjoyed in the mid-
what was up and she committing suicide? Black nineteen-eighties as the
thought DeeDee was one of Converse One Stars. DeeDee's country's hottest sneaker
those people. DeeDee says big score was calling the company. DeeDee works for
that she responded with sandal craze. She had been an advertising agency in Del
reserve-that "I was like, out in Los Angeles and had Mar called Lambesis, where
'Whatever' "-but Baysie said kept seeing the white teen-age she puts out a quarterly tip
that if DeeDee ever wanted girls dressing up like cholos, sheet called the L Report on
to come and work at Mexican gangsters, in tight what the cool kids in major
Converse she should just white tank tops known as American cities are thinking
call, and nine months later "wife beaters," with a bra and doing and buying.
DeeDee called. This was strap hanging out, and long Baysie and DeeDee are best
about the time the cool kids shorts and tube socks and friends. They talk on the
2. phone all the time. They get cutting edge, the more elusive lack of a better word, really
together whenever Baysie is the cutting edge becomes. cool. She doesn't do the teen
in L.A. (DeeDee: "It's, like, This is the first rule of the thing of climbing half an
how many times can you cool: The quicker the chase, octave at the end of every
drive past O. J. Simpson's the quicker the flight. The act sentence. Instead, she drags
house?"), and between them of discovering what's cool is out her vowels for emphasis,
they can talk for hours about what causes cool to move on, so that if she mildly
the art of the coolhunt. which explains the disagreed with something
They're the Lewis and Clark triumphant circularity of I'd said she would say
of cool. coolhunting: because we have "Maalcolm" and if she
coolhunters like DeeDee and strongly disagreed with what
What they have is what Baysie, cool changes more I'd said she would say
everybody seems to want quickly, and because cool "Maaalcolm."
these days, which is a changes more quickly, we
window on the world of the need coolhunters like DeeDee Baysie is older, just past
street. Once, when fashion and Baysie. forty (although you would
trends were set by the big never guess that), and went
couture houses-when cool DeeDee is tall and glamorous, to Exeter and Middlebury
was trickle- down-that with short hair she has dyed and had two grandfathers
wasn't important. But so often that she claims to who went to Harvard
sometime in the past few have forgotten her real color. (although you wouldn't
decades things got turned She drives a yellow 1977 Trans guess that, either). She has
over, and fashion became Am with a burgundy stripe curly brown hair and big
trickle-up. It's now about down the center and a 1973 green eyes and long legs and
chase and flight-designers Mercedes 450 SL, and lives in so much energy that it is
and retailers and the mass a spare, Japanese-style cabin hard to imagine her asleep,
consumer giving chase to in Laurel Canyon. She uses or resting, or even standing
the elusive prey of street words like "rad" and "totally," still for longer than thirty
cool-and the rise of and offers non-stop, deadpan seconds. The hunt for cool is
coolhunting as a profession pronouncements on pop an obsession with her, and
shows how serious the chase culture, as in "It's all about DeeDee is the same way.
has become. The sneakers of Pee-wee Herman." She DeeDee used to sit on the
Nike and Reebok used to sounds at first like a teen, like corner of West Broadway
come out yearly. Now a new the same teens who, at and Prince in SoHo-back
style comes out every Lambesis, it is her job to when SoHo was cool-and
season. Apparel designers follow. But teen speech- take pictures of everyone
used to have an eighteen- particularly girl-teen speech, who walked by for an entire
month lead time between with its fixation on reported hour. Baysie can tell you
concept and sale. Now speech ("so she goes," "and precisely where she goes on
they're reducing that to a I'm like," "and he goes") and her Reebok coolhunts to
year, or even six months, in its stock vocabulary of find the really cool
order to react faster to new accompanying grimaces and alternative white kids ("I'd
ideas from the street. The gestures-is about using maybe go to Portland and
paradox, of course, is that language less to communicate hang out where the
the better coolhunters than to fit in. DeeDee uses skateboarders hang out near
become at bringing the teen speech to set herself that bridge") or which
mainstream close to the apart, and the result is, for snowboarding mountain has
3. cooler kids-Stratton, in and Polo Sport and Reebok Hilfiger by the hip-hop
Vermont, or Summit Classics on their feet. But auteur Grand Puba, who
County, in Colorado. when I asked DeeDee about wore a dark-green-and-blue
(Summit, definitely.) that, she just rolled her eyes: Tommy jacket over a white
DeeDee can tell you on the "Sometimes Baysie goes off on Tommy T-shirt as he leaned
basis of the L Report's these tangents. Man, I love on his black Lamborghini on
research exactly how far that woman!" the cover of the hugely
Dallas is behind New York in influential "Grand Puba
coolness (from six to eight I used to think that if I talked 2000" CD, and whose love
months). Baysie is to Baysie and DeeDee long for Hilfiger soon spread to
convinced that Los Angeles enough I could write a other rappers. (Who could
is not happening right now: coolhunting manual, an forget the rhymes of Mobb
"In the early nineteen- encyclopedia of cool. But then Deep? "Tommy was my
nineties a lot more was I realized that the manual nigga /And couldn't figure
coming from L.A. They had would have so many footnotes /How me and Hilfiger / used
a big trend with the whole and caveats that it would be to move through with
Melrose Avenue look-the unreadable. Coolhunting is vigor.") Then I had lunch
stupid goatees, the shorter not about the articulation of a with one of Hilfiger's
hair. It was cleaned-up coherent philosophy of cool. designers, a twenty-six-year-
aftergrunge. There were a lot It's just a collection of old named Ulrich (Ubi)
of places you could go to buy spontaneous observations and Simpson, who has a Puerto
vinyl records. It was a strong predictions that differ from Rican mother and a Dutch-
place to go for looks. Then it one moment to the next and Venezuelan father, plays
went back to being horrible." from one coolhunter to the lacrosse, snowboards, surfs
DeeDee is convinced that next. Ask a coolhunter where the long board, goes to hip-
Japan is happening: "I the baggy-jeans look came hop concerts, listens to
linked onto this future- from, for example, and you Jungle, Edith Piaf, opera,
technology thing two years might get any number of rap, and Metallica, and has
ago. Now look at it, it's huge. answers: urban black kids working with him on his
It's the whole resurgence of mimicking the jailhouse look, design team a twenty-seven-
Nike-Nike being larger than skateboarders looking for year-old black guy from
life. I went to Japan and saw room to move, snowboarders Montclair with dreadlocks, a
the kids just bailing the most trying not to look like skiers, twenty-two-year-old Asian-
technologically advanced or, alternatively, all three at American who lives on the
Nikes with their little once, in some grand Lower East Side, a twenty-
dresses and little outfits and concordance. five-year-old South Asian
I'm like, 'Whoa, this is guy from Fiji, and a twenty-
trippy!' It's performance Or take the question of exactly one-year-old white graffiti
mixed with fashion. It's how Tommy Hilfiger-a forty- artist from Queens. That's
really superheavy." Baysie five-year-old white guy from when it occurred to me that
has a theory that Liverpool Greenwich, Connecticut, maybe the reason Tommy
is cool right now because it's doing all- American preppy Hilfiger can make white
the birthplace of the whole clothes-came to be the culture cool to black culture
"lad" look, which involves designer of choice for urban is that he has people
soccer blokes in the pubs black America. Some say it working for him who are
going superdressy and was all about the early and cool in both cultures
wearing Dolce & Gabbana visible endorsement given simultaneously. Then again,
4. maybe it was all Grand RXT-a low-cut run/walk shoe baggy Guess jeans, and, on
Puba. Who knows? in white and blue and mesh his feet, Nike Air Jordans.
with a translucent "ice" sole, He couldn't have been more
One day last month, Baysie which retails for a hundred than thirteen. But when he
took me on a coolhunt to the and ten dollars-he looked at it started talking you could see
Bronx and Harlem, lugging long and hard and shook his Baysie's eyes light up,
a big black canvas bag with head in pure admiration and because somehow she knew
twenty-four different shoes just said two words, dragging the kid was the real thing.
that Reebok is about to each of them out: "No doubt."
bring out, and as we drove "How many pairs of shoes
down Fordham Road, she Baysie was interested in what do you buy a month?" Baysie
had her head out the he was saying, because the asked.
window like a little kid, DMX RXT she had was a girls'
checking out what everyone shoe that actually hadn't been "Two," the kid answered.
on the street was wearing. doing all that well. Later, she "And if at the end I find one
We went to Dr. Jay's, which explained to me that the fact more I like I get to buy that,
is the cool place to buy that the boys loved the shoe too."
sneakers in the Bronx, and was critical news, because it
Baysie crouched down on suggested that Reebok had a Baysie was onto him. "Does
the floor and started pulling potential hit if it just switched your mother spoil you?"
the shoes out of her bag one the shoe to the men's section.
by one, soliciting opinions How she managed to distill The kid blushed, but a friend
from customers who this piece of information from next to him was laughing.
gathered around and asking the crowd of teenagers around "Whatever he wants, he
one question after another, her, how she made any sense gets."
in rapid sequence. One guy of the two dozen shoes in her
she listened closely to was bag, most of which (to my Baysie laughed, too. She had
maybe eighteen or nineteen, eyes, anyway) looked pretty the DMX RXT in his size. He
with a diamond stud in his much the same, and how she tried them on. He rocked
ear and a thin beard. He was knew which of the teens to back and forth, testing them.
wearing a Polo baseball cap, really focus on was a mystery. He looked back at Baysie.
a brown leather jacket, and Baysie is a Wasp from New He was dead serious now:
the big, oversized leather England, and she crouched on "Make sure these come out."
boots that are everywhere the floor in Dr. Jay's for
uptown right now. Baysie almost an hour, talking and Baysie handed him the new
would hand him a shoe and joking with the homeboys "Rush" Emmitt Smith shoe
he would hold it, look at the without a trace of due out in the fall. One of
top, and move it up and condescension or self- the boys had already
down and flip it over. The consciousness. pronounced it "phat," and
first one he didn't like: "Oh- another had looked through
kay." The second one he Near the end of her visit, a the marbleized-foam cradle
hated: he made a growling young boy walked up and sat in the heel and cried out in
sound in his throat even down on the bench next to delight, "This is bug!" But
before Baysie could give it to her. He was wearing a black this kid was the acid test,
him, as if to say, "Put it back woollen cap with white stripes because this kid knew cool.
in the bag-now!" But when pulled low, a blue North Face He paused. He looked at it
she handed him a new DMX pleated down jacket, a pair of hard. "Reebok," he said,
5. soberly and carefully, "is Ryan and Neal Gross's deliberate and the skeptical
trying to get butter." analysis of the spread of masses, who would never try
hybrid seed corn in Greene anything until the most
In the car on the way back to County, Iowa, in the nineteen- respected farmers had tried
Manhattan, Baysie repeated thirties. The new seed corn it. Only after they had been
it twice. "Not better. Butter! was introduced there in about converted did the
That kid could totally tell 1928, and it was superior in "laggards," the most
you what he thinks." Baysie every respect to the seed that traditional of all, follow suit.
had spent an hour had been used by farmers for The critical thing about this
coolhunting in a shoe store decades. But it wasn't adopted sequence is that it is almost
and found out that Reebok's all at once. Of two hundred entirely interpersonal.
efforts were winning the and fifty-nine farmers studied According to Ryan and
highest of hip-hop praise. by Ryan and Gross, only a Gross, only the innovators
"He was so fucking smart." handful had started planting relied to any great extent on
the new seed by 1933. In 1934, radio advertising and farm
2. sixteen took the plunge. In journals and seed salesmen
1935, twenty-one more in making their decision to
If you want to understand followed; the next year, there switch to the hybrid.
how trends work, and why were thirty-six, and the year Everyone else made his
coolhunters like Baysie and after that a whopping sixty- decision overwhelmingly
DeeDee have become so one. The succeeding figures because of the example and
important, a good place to were then forty-six, thirty-six, the opinions of his
start is with what's known as fourteen, and three, until, by neighbors and peers.
diffusion research, which is 1941, all but two of the two
the study of how ideas and hundred and fifty-nine Isn't this just how fashion
innovations spread. farmers studied were using works? A few years ago, the
Diffusion researchers do the new seed. In the language classic brushed-suède Hush
things like spending five of diffusion research, the Puppies with the lightweight
years studying the adoption handful of farmers who crêpe sole-the moc-toe
of irrigation techniques in a started trying hybrid seed oxford known as the Duke
Colombian mountain corn at the very beginning of and the slip-on with the
village, or developing the thirties were the golden buckle known as the
complex matrices to map the "innovators," the adventurous Columbia-were selling
spread of new math in the ones. The slightly larger group barely sixty-five thousand
Pittsburgh school system. that followed them was the pairs a year. The company
What they do may seem like "early adopters." They were was trying to walk away
a far cry from, say, how the the opinion leaders in the from the whole suède casual
Tommy Hilfiger thing community, the respected, look entirely. It wanted to do
spread from Harlem to every thoughtful people who "aspirational" shoes: "active
suburban mall in the watched and analyzed what casuals" in smooth leather,
country, but it really isn't: those wild innovators were like the Mall Walker, with a
both are about how new doing and then did it Comfort Curve technology
ideas spread from one themselves. Then came the outsole and a heel stabilizer-
person to the next. big bulge of farmers in 1936, the kind of shoes you see in
1937, and 1938-the "early Kinney's for $39.95. But
One of the most famous majority" and the "late then something strange
diffusion studies is Bruce majority," which is to say the started happening. Two
6. Hush Puppies executives- Rockford, Michigan my mind"). A few months
Owen Baxter and Jeff Lewis- (population thirty-eight later, in Los Angeles, the
were doing a fashion shoot hundred), where Hush designer Joel Fitzpatrick put
for their Mall Walkers and Puppies has been making the a twenty-five-foot inflatable
ran into a creative Dukes and the Columbias in basset hound on the roof of
consultant from Manhattan an old factory down by the his store on La Brea Avenue
named Jeffrey Miller, who Rogue River for almost forty and gutted his adjoining art
informed them that the years. They took me to the gallery to turn it into a Hush
Dukes and the Columbias plant when I was in Rockford. Puppies department, and
weren't dead, they were In a crowded, noisy, low-slung even before he opened-while
dead chic. "We were being building, factory workers he was still painting and
told," Baxter recalls, "that stand in long rows, gluing, putting up shelves-Pee-wee
there were areas in the stapling, and sewing together Herman walked in and
Village, in SoHo, where the shoes in dozens of bright asked for a couple of pairs.
shoes were selling-in resale colors, and the two executives Pee-wee Herman! "It was
shops-and that people were stopped at each production total word of mouth. I didn't
wearing the old Hush station and described it in even have a sign back then,"
Puppies. They were going to detail. Lewis and Baxter know Fitzpatrick recalls. In 1995,
the ma-and-pa stores, the shoes. But they would be the the company sold four
little stores that still carried first to admit that they don't hundred and thirty
them, and there was this know cool. "Miller was saying thousand pairs of the classic
authenticity of being able to that there is something going Hush Puppies. In 1996, it
say, 'I am wearing an on with the shoes-that Isaac sold a million six hundred
original pair of Hush Mizrahi was wearing the shoes thousand, and that was only
Puppies.' " for his personal use," Lewis scratching the surface,
told me. We were seated because in Europe and the
Baxter and Lewis-tall, solid, around the conference table in rest of the world, where
fair-haired Midwestern guys the Hush Puppies Hush Puppies have a huge
with thick, shiny wedding headquarters in Rockford, following-where they might
bands-are shoe men, first with the snow and the trees outsell the American market
and foremost. Baxter was outside and a big water tower four to one-the revival was
working the cash register at behind us. "I think it's fair to just beginning.
his father's shoe store in say that at the time we had no
Mount Prospect, Illinois, at idea who Isaac Mizrahi was." The cool kids who started
the age of thirteen. Lewis wearing old Dukes and
was doing inventory in his By late 1994, things had begun Columbias from thrift shops
father's shoe store in to happen in a rush. First, the were the innovators. Pee-
Pontiac, Michigan, at the age designer John Bartlett called. wee Herman, wandering in
of seven. Baxter was in the He wanted to use Hush off the street, was an early
National Guard during the Puppies as accessories in his adopter. The million six
1968 Democratic spring collection. Then Anna hundred thousand people
Convention, in Chicago, and Sui called. Miller, the man who bought Hush Puppies
was stationed across the from Manhattan, flew out to last year are the early
street from the Conrad Michigan to give advice on a majority, jumping in
Hilton downtown, right in new line ("Of course, packing because the really cool
the middle of things. Today, my own food and thinking people have already blazed
the two men work out of about 'Fargo' in the corner of the trail. Hush Puppies are
7. moving through the country fashion runways and on MTV. 3.
just the way hybrid seed It can accelerate the transition
corn moved through Greene from the innovator to the When Baysie Wightman
County-all of which early adopter and on to the went to Dr. Jay's, she was
illustrates what coolhunters early majority. But it can't just looking for customer
can and cannot do. If Jeffrey manufacture cool out of thin response to the new shoes
Miller had been wrong-if air, and that's the second rule Reebok had planned for the
cool people hadn't been of cool. fourth quarter of 1997 and
digging through the thrift the first quarter of 1998.
shops for Hush Puppies-and At the peak of the Hush This kind of customer
he had arbitrarily decided Puppies craziness last year, testing is critical at Reebok,
that Baxter and Lewis Hush Puppies won the prize because the last decade has
should try to convince non- for best accessory at the not been kind to the
cool people that the shoes Council of Fashion Designers' company. In 1987, it had a
were cool, it wouldn't have awards dinner, at Lincoln third of the American
worked. You can't convince Center. The award was athletic-shoe market, well
the late majority that Hush accepted by the Hush Puppies ahead of Nike. Last year, it
Puppies are cool, because president, Louis Dubrow, who had sixteen per cent. "The
the late majority makes its came out wearing a pair of kid in the store would say,
coolness decisions on the custom-made black patent- 'I'd like this shoe if your logo
basis of what the early leather Hush Puppies and wasn't on it,' " E. Scott
majority is doing, and you stood there blinking and Morris, who's a senior
can't convince the early looking at the assembled designer for Reebok, told
majority, because the early crowd as if it were the last me. "That's kind of a punch
majority is looking at the scene of "Close Encounters of in the mouth. But we've all
early adopters, and you can't the Third Kind." It was a seen it. You go into a shoe
convince the early adopters, strange moment. There was store. The kid picks up the
because they take their cues the president of the Hush shoe and says, 'Ah, man, this
from the innovators. The Puppies company, of is nice.' He turns the shoe
innovators do get their cool Rockford, Michigan, around and around. He
ideas from people other than population thirty-eight looks at it underneath. He
their peers, but the fact is hundred, sharing a stage with looks at the side and he
that they are the last people Calvin Klein and Donna Karan goes, 'Ah, this is Reebok,'
who can be convinced by a and Isaac Mizrahi-and all and says, 'I ain't buying this,'
marketing campaign that a because some kids in the East and puts the shoe down and
pair of suède shoes is cool. Village began combing walks out. And you go, 'You
These are, after all, the through thrift shops for old was just digging it a minute
people who spent hours Dukes. Fashion was at the ago. What happened?' "
sifting through thrift-store mercy of those kids, whoever Somewhere along the way,
bins. And why did they do they were, and it was a the company lost its cool,
that? Because their wonderful thing if the kids and Reebok now faces the
definition of cool is doing picked you, but a scary thing, task not only of rebuilding
something that nobody else too, because it meant that cool its image but of making the
is doing. A company can was something you could not shoes so cool that the kids in
intervene in the cool cycle. It control. You needed someone the store can't put them
can put its shoes on really to find cool and tell you what down.
cool celebrities and on it was.
8. Every few months, then, the forward than kids in the marketing executives in a
company's coolhunters go Bronx, who like things a little long conference room on the
out into the field with more colorful and glitzy. third floor. In the course of
prototypes of the upcoming Brooklyn, meanwhile, is two hours, they put one pair
shoes to find out what kids conservative and preppy, of shoes after another on the
really like, and come back to more like Washington, D.C. table in front of me, talking
recommend the necessary For reasons no one really excitedly about each
changes. The prototype of knows, Reeboks are coolest in sneaker's prospects, because
one recent Emmitt Smith Philadelphia. In Philly, in fact, the feeling at Reebok is that
shoe, for example, had a the Reebok Classics are so things are finally turning
piece of molded rubber on huge they are known simply around. The basketball shoe
the end of the tongue as a as National Anthems, as in that Reebok brought out last
design element; it was "I'll have a pair of blue winter for Allen Iverson, the
supposed to give the shoe a Anthems in nine and a half." star rookie guard for the
certain "richness," but the Philadelphia is Reebok's Philadelphia 76ers, for
kids said they thought it innovator town. From there example, is one of the
looked overbuilt. Then trends move along the East hottest shoes in the country.
Reebok gave the shoes to the Coast, trickling all the way to Dr. Jay's sold out of Iversons
Boston College football team Charlotte, North Carolina. in two days, compared with
for wear-testing, and when the week it took the store to
they got the shoes back they Reebok has its headquarters sell out of Nike's new Air
found out that all the in Stoughton, Massachusetts, Jordans. Iverson himself is
football players had cut out outside Boston-in a modern brash and charismatic and
the rubber component with corporate park right off Route faster from foul line to foul
scissors. As messages go, 24. There are basketball and line than anyone else in the
this was hard to miss. The tennis courts next to the league. He's the equivalent
tongue piece wasn't cool, building, and a health club on of those kids in the East
and on the final version of the ground floor that you can Village who began wearing
the shoe it was gone. The look directly into from the Hush Puppies way back
rule of thumb at Reebok is parking lot. The front lobby is when. He's an innovator,
that if the kids in Chicago, adorned with shrines for all of and the hope at Reebok is
New York, and Detroit all Reebok's most prominent that if he gets big enough the
like a shoe, it's a guaranteed athletes-shrines complete whole company can ride
hit. More than likely, with dramatic action back to coolness on his
though, the coolhunt is photographs, their sports coattails, the way Nike rode
going to turn up subtle jerseys, and a pair of their to coolness on the coattails
differences from city to city, signature shoes-and the halls of Michael Jordan. That's
so that once the coolhunters are filled with so many young, why Baysie was so excited
come back the designers determinedly athletic people when the kid said Reebok
have to find out some way to that when I visited Reebok was trying to get butter
synthesize what was heard, headquarters I suddenly when he looked at the Rush
and pick out just those wished I'd packed my gym and the DMX RXT: it was a
things that all the kids clothes in case someone sign, albeit a small one, that
seemed to agree on. In New challenged me to wind the indefinable, abstract
York, for example, kids in sprints. At Stoughton, I met thing called cool was coming
Harlem are more with a handful of the back.
sophisticated and fashion- company's top designers and
9. When Baysie comes back It Here First, Entertainment approach, sending out
from a coolhunt, she sits and Leisure, Clothing and coolhunters with video
down with marketing Accessories, Personal and cameras to talk to kids on
experts and sales Individual, Aspirations, and the ground that it's too
representatives and Food and Beverages-which difficult to get cool kids to
designers, and reconnects are, in turn, broken up into fill out questionnaires. Once,
them to the street, making dozens of subcategories, so when I was visiting the
sure they have the right that Personal and Individual, Sputnik girls-as Misdom
shoes going to the right for example, includes Cool and DeLuca are known on
places at the right price. Date, Cool Evening, Free the street, because they look
When she got back from the Time, Favorite Possession, alike and their first names
Bronx, for example, the first and on and on. The are so similar and both have
thing she did was tell all information in those the same awesome New
these people they had to get subcategories is subdivided York accents-they showed
a new men's DMX RXT out, again by sex and by age me a video of the girl they
fast, because the kids on the bracket (14-18, 19-24, 25-30), believe was the patient zero
street loved the women's and then, as a control, the L of the whole eighties revival
version. "It's hotter than we Report gives you the going on right now. It was
realized," she told them. The corresponding set of back in September of 1993.
coolhunter's job in this preferences for "mainstream" Joanne and Janine were on
instance is very specific. kids. Seventh Avenue, outside the
What DeeDee does, on the Fashion Institute of
other hand, is a little more Few coolhunters bother to Technology, doing random
ambitious. With the L analyze trends with this street interviews for a major
Report, she tries to degree of specificity. DeeDee's jeans company, and, quite
construct a kind of grand biggest competitor, for by accident, they ran into
matrix of cool, comprising example, is something called this nineteen-year- old
not just shoes but everything the Hot Sheet, out of raver. She had close-
kids like, and not just kids of Manhattan. It uses a panel of cropped hair, which was
certain East Coast urban three thousand kids a year green at the top, and at the
markets but kids all over. from across the country and temples was shaved even
DeeDee and her staff put it divides up their answers by closer and dyed pink. She
out four times a year, in six sex and age, but it doesn't had rings and studs all over
different versions-for New distinguish between regions, her face, and a thick
York, Los Angeles, San or between trendsetting and collection of silver tribal
Francisco, Austin-Dallas, mainstream respondents. So jewelry around her neck,
Seattle, and Chicago-and what you're really getting is and vintage jeans. She
then sell it to manufacturers, what all kids think is cool-not looked into the camera and
retailers, and ad agencies what cool kids think is cool, said, "The sixties came in
(among others) for twenty which is a considerably and then the seventies came
thousand dollars a year. different piece of information. in and I think it's ready to
They go to each city and find Janine Misdom and Joanne come back to the eighties.
the coolest bars and clubs, DeLuca, who run the Sputnik It's totally eighties: the eye
and ask the coolest kids to coolhunting group out of the makeup, the clothes. It's
fill out questionnaires. The garment district in totally going back to that."
information is then divided Manhattan, meanwhile, favor Immediately, Joanne and
into six categories-You Saw an entirely impressionistic Janine started asking
10. around. "We talked to a few jackets, rubber and latex, today. Cool people, on the
kids on the Lower East Side khakis, and the rock band other hand, are a constant.
who said they were feeling Kiss. Among female
the need to start breaking trendsetters: ska music, old- When I was in California, I
out their old Michael lady clothing, and cyber tech. met Salvador Barbier, who
Jackson jackets," Joanne In Chicago, snowboarding is had been described to me by
said. "They were joking huge among trendsetters of a coolhunter as "the Michael
about it. They weren't doing both sexes and all ages. Jordan of skateboarding."
it yet. But they were going Women over nineteen are into He was tall and lean and
to, you know? They were short hair, while those in their languid, with a cowboy's
saying, 'We're getting the teens have embraced mod insouciance, and we drove
urge to break out our culture, rock climbing, tag through the streets of Long
Members Only jackets.' " watches, and bootleg pants. In Beach at fifteen miles an
That was right when Joanne Austin-Dallas, meanwhile, hour in a white late-model
and Janine were just twenty-five-to- thirty-year-old Ford Mustang, a car he had
starting up; calling the women trendsetters are into bought as a kind of ironic
eighties revival was their hats, heroin, computers, status gesture ("It would
first big break, and now they cigars, Adidas, and velvet, look good if I had a Polo
put out a full-blown while men in their twenties jacket or maybe Nautica," he
videotaped report twice a are into video games and said) to go with his '62
year which is a collection of hemp. In all, the typical L Econoline van and his '64 T-
clips of interviews with Report runs over one hundred bird. Sal told me that he and
extremely progressive pages. But with that flood of his friends, who are all in
people. data comes an obsolescence their mid-twenties, recently
disclaimer: "The fluctuating took to dressing up as if they
What DeeDee argues, nature of the trendsetting were in eighth grade again
though, is that cool is too market makes keeping up and gathering together-
subtle and too variegated to with trends a difficult task." having a "rally"-on old BMX
be captured with these kind By the spring, in other words, bicycles in front of their
of broad strokes. Cool is a everything may have changed. local 7-Eleven. "I'd wear
set of dialects, not a muscle shirts, like Def
language. The L Report can The key to coolhunting, then, Leppard or Foghat or some
tell you, for example, that is to look for cool people first old heavy-metal band, and
nineteen-to-twenty-four- and cool things later, and not tight, tight tapered Levi's,
year-old male trendsetters the other way around. Since and Vans on my feet-big,
in Seattle would most like to cool things are always like, checkered Vans or
meet, among others, King changing, you can't look for striped Vans or camouflage
Solomon and Dr. Seuss, and them, because the very fact Vans-and then wristbands
that nineteen-to-twenty- they are cool means you have and gloves with the fingers
four-year- old female no idea what to look for. What cut off. It was total eighties
trendsetters in San you would be doing is fashion. You had to look like
Francisco have turned their thinking back on what was that to participate in the
backs on Calvin Klein, cool before and extrapolating, rally. We had those denim
Nintendo Gameboy, and sex. which is about as useful as jackets with patches on the
What's cool right now? presuming that because the back and combs that hung
Among male New York Dow rose ten points yesterday out the back pocket. We
trendsetters: North Face it will rise another ten points went without I.D.s, because
11. we'd have to have someone around him has blue hair, I'm someone as a coolhunter
else buy us beers." At this going to gravitate toward him, who was not, himself, cool,
point, Sal laughed. He was because, hey, what's Joe and it was a disaster.
driving really slowly and Regular Guy doing in a coffee
staring straight ahead and shop with people with blue "You can give them the
talking in a low drawl-the hair?" boundaries," Piney
coolhunter's dream. "We'd explained. "You can say that
ride to this bar and I'd have We were sitting outside the if people shop at Banana
to carry my bike inside, Fred Segal store in West Republic and listen to Alanis
because we have really Hollywood. I was wearing a Morissette they're probably
expensive bikes, and when very conservative white not trendsetters. But then
we got inside people would Brooks Brothers button-down they might go out and
freak out. They'd say, and a pair of Levi's, and assume that everyone who
'Omigod,' and I was asking DeeDee looked first at my does that is not a
them if they wanted to go for shirt and then my pants and trendsetter, and not look at
a ride on the handlebars. dissolved into laughter: "I the other things."
They were like, 'What is mean, I might even go up to
wrong with you. My you in a cool place." "I mean, I myself might go
boyfriend used to dress like into Banana Republic and
that in the eighth grade!' Picking the right person is buy a T-shirt," DeeDee
And I was like, 'He was harder than it sounds, though. chimed in.
probably a lot cooler then, Piney Kahn, who works for
too.' " DeeDee, says, "There are a lot Their non-cool coolhunter
of people in the gray area. just didn't have that certain
This is just the kind of You've got these kids who instinct, that sense that told
person DeeDee wants. "I'm dress ultra funky and have him when it was O.K. to
looking for somebody who is their own style. Then you deviate from the manual.
an individual, who has realize they're just running Because he wasn't cool, he
definitely set himself apart after their friends." The trick didn't know cool, and that's
from everybody else, who is not just to be able to tell the essence of the third rule
doesn't look like his peers. who is different but to be able of cool: you have to be one
I've run into trendsetters to tell when that difference to know one. That's why
who look completely Joe represents something truly Baysie is still on top of this
Regular Guy. I can see Joe cool. It's a gut thing. You have business at forty-one. "It's
Regular Guy at a club to somehow just know. easier for me to tell you
listening to some totally DeeDee hired Piney because what kid is cool than to tell
hardcore band playing, and I Piney clearly knows: she is you what things are cool,"
say to myself 'Omigod, twenty-four and used to work she says. But that's all she
what's that guy doing here?' with the Beastie Boys and has needs to know. In this sense,
and that totally intrigues the formidable self-possession the third rule of cool fits
me, and I have to walk up to of someone who is not only perfectly into the second:
him and say, 'Hey, you're cool herself but whose parents the second rule says that
really into this band. What's were cool. "I mean," she says, cool cannot be
up?' You know what I mean? "they named me after a tree." manufactured, only
I look at everything. If I see observed, and the third says
Joe Regular Guy sitting in a Piney and DeeDee said that that it can only be observed
coffee shop and everyone they once tried to hire by those who are themselves
