Introduction

Essay Excerpt

As with their music, the Hipsters of Bebop opened up streetstyle to accommodate all manor of individual creativity. Instead of the Zootie’s visual message of ‘I’ve got it made’, the message became ‘I’m one of a kind’. Again, exactly as in their music, old rules were broken by unending, uninhibited experimentation. Plenty of subsequent streetstyle subcultures – Rockabilly, Funk, Acid Jazz – drew inspiration from the Bebop Hipsters but their real influence has always been on those impossible to categorize, outside the box lone, eccentric individualists – those who, whatever their musical or sartorial inclination will always be hip to the jive.