Oh New York Times Sunday Style section, why are you so beguiling? I have my Sunday New York Times ritual, which involves reading the front and arts sections in one marathon stretch, then returning to pick the bones of the sports, business, books and travel sections. I usually save the Week in Review and style section for bedtime. So sue me! I enjoy reading about shared summer houses in the Hamptons and a night on the town with a third-tier Baldwin brother.
This weekend's style section contained a snarky post-mortem of this year's Renegade Craft Fair. I'd like to crawl inside the mind of a Pomeranian toting upper West Side lady when she finds out about iPod ponchos and carved mustaches on a stick. When I owned a record store in Lincoln, Nebraska, middle-aged housewives were forever coming in my store asking about these "zines" (they always rhymed it with "wines") they read about in the paper. Maybe somebody will start organizing anthropological "field trips" to Williamsburg.
The article took on many of the issues that plague folks who attend alt-craft fairs--everybody makes the same skull and bones iPod covers and silkscreened totebags. There is a perfect balance of humor and cheerleading in this article...to wit:
Among the many mysteries of the hipster life — Do they actually enjoy the taste of Pabst Blue Ribbon? How many graphic designers can the world need? — one of the most persistent is the much-copied (and parodied) aesthetic.
From ironic T-shirts and thrift-store dresses to ’80s jewelry and skinny ties, it can sometimes seem as if every young person who eschews investment banking and law school for creative pursuits looks eerily similar. Where do these trends come from? Who decided, for example, that a small star would be the must-have tattoo, or that the sparrow would become an icon?
Who knew that the octopus would replace the sparrow as the DIY icon this year? Hats off to Melena Ryzik and the New York Times for having fun with the Indie Craft movement rather than getting ponderous (or pedantic).
