[LINK] "Are There Really No Hipsters in China?"

[rfmcdonald]

Science fiction writer Frederik Pohl's novels were overfull with visions of a China populated by crowds of commuters bicycling through the streets on their simple bikes. In Slate, J. David Goodman suggests that the Chinese aren't at all interested in these bikes any more mainly because they're serious, non-ironic consumers.

Fixed gears—brakeless, single-speed bicycles in which the only gear is locked in place on the back hub, so that the rider reduces speed by pedaling forward at a slower rate—have long been a staple of New York messengers. In the last 10 years or so, the urban-cowboy quality of riding without brakes, as well as the bikes' simplicity, has made fixed gears, aka "fixies," an increasingly common hipster accessory and a growing part of global urban style.

Irony also plays a key role, as riders deliberately opt for an expensive, often custom-made ride, with hand-built components, that is less functional than what's available at Wal-Mart. (That is, until March, when even Wal-Mart jumped on the trend.)

It may be this last aspect that's preventing the bikes from catching on in China. Indeed, the anemic fixie scene seems to offer an object lesson in the difficulty of marketing fashion irony here.

"There is a saying in Chinese: 'Laugh at the poor, not the prostitutes,' " Juanjuan Wu, a professor at the University of Minnesota and author of Chinese Fashion From Mao to Now, told me. "Hipster fashion only really works by communicating your irony—in other words, someone needs to 'get it.' Hipster irony in dress would most likely be misinterpreted in Chinese society as simple poverty or weirdness."

Nicole Fall, co-founder and trend director at Five by Fifty, an Asian trend consulting firm, agreed. "Consumers need to be in a position to reject norms or feel confident enough about their status and knowledge to be ironic," she said. "Thus a 20-year-old New York hipster can smoke a pipe or drink a really naff drink because it's funny, but for someone in China, many of their equivalent peers don't have the history and past knowledge of trends to understand what has been cool in the past."

Though there are examples of ironic style on display in China—Mao's face, red stars, military regalia are today worn with something less than earnestness—there is also more at stake in young people's fashion choices, making them "less likely to 'play' with their dress in a cynical or ironic manner," Wu explained. They prefer brands that are recognizably luxury—Louis Vuitton, Prada, Bottega Veneta, etc.—over more ambiguous fashions.