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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 cool. And, of course, the first and expressionless, with a the big clear-blue plastic rule says that it cannot peacoat, dark jeans, and bubble on the side-the accurately be observed at all, short-cropped black hair. visible Air-Sole unit- with because the act of "Jonas is good," DeeDee says. one finger. "It's so fucking discovering cool causes cool "He works with me on rad. It looks like a platypus!" to take flight, so if you add everything. That guy knows In front of me, there is a pair all three together they more pop culture. You know: of Nike's new shoes for the describe a closed loop, the What was the name of the basketball player Jason hermeneutic circle of store Mrs. Garrett owned on Kidd. coolhunting, a phenomenon 'The Facts of Life'? He knows whereby not only can the all the names of the extras I pick it up. "This looks . . . uncool not see cool but cool from eighties sitcoms. I can't cool," I venture uncertainly. cannot even be adequately believe someone like him described to them. Baysie exists. He's fucking DeeDee is on the couch, says that she can see a coat unbelievable. Jonas can spot a where she's surrounded by on one of her friends and cool person a mile away." shoeboxes and sneakers and think it's not cool but then white tissue paper, and she see the same coat on DeeDee Jonas takes the boxes of shoes looks up reprovingly and think that it is cool. It is and starts unpacking them on because, of course, I don't not possible to be cool, in the couch next to DeeDee. He get it. I can't get it. other words, unless you are- picks up a pair of the new "Beyooond cool, Maalcolm. in some larger sense-already Nike ACG hiking boots, and Beyooond cool." cool, and so the says, "All the Japanese in phenomenon that the uncool Niketown were really into © 1997 Malcolm Gladwell cannot see and cannot have these." He hands the shoes to described to them is also DeeDee. something that they cannot ever attain, because if they "Of course they were!" she did it would no longer be says. "The Japanese are all cool. Coolhunting represents into the tech-looking shit. the ascendancy, in the Look how exaggerated it is, marketplace, of high school. how bulbous." DeeDee has very ambivalent feelings about Once, I was visiting DeeDee Nike, because she thinks its at her house in Laurel marketing has got out of Canyon when one of her L hand. When she was in the Report assistants, Jonas New York Niketown with a Vail, walked in. He'd just girlfriend recently, she says, come back from Niketown she started getting light- on Wilshire Boulevard, headed and freaked out. "It's where he'd bought seven cult, cult, cult. It was like, hundred dollars' worth of 'Hello, are we all drinking the the latest sneakers to go Kool-Aid here?' " But this with the three hundred shoe she loves. It's Dr. Jay's in dollars' worth of skateboard the Bronx all over again. shoes he'd bought earlier in DeeDee turns the shoe around the afternoon. Jonas is tall and around in the air, tapping