Go into a “cool” coffee shop. Notice the reclaimed wood, big glass windows, subdued colors, and light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Now go into another cool coffee shop in another city. Notice how the look is exactly the same.
Now, if you can afford it, fly to Paris. (We’ll wait.) Go to the cool coffee shop. See anything familiar? Go to Denmark. Moscow. Peking. Sydney.
If you are sick of coffee by now, go to a restaurant, bar, Airbnb rental, or anywhere with the reputation of being cool. Look where the hipsters hang out. Notice how everything looks the same!
So says British journalist Kyle Chayka, who says that “the hipster aesthetic is taking over the world.”
From Kyle Chayka, Same old, same old. How the hipster aesthetic is taking over the world | Opinion | The Guardian:
Go to Shoreditch Grind, near a roundabout in the middle of London’s hipster district. It’s a coffee shop with rough-hewn wooden tables, plentiful sunlight from wide windows, and austere pendant lighting. Then head to Takk in Manchester. It’s a coffee shop with a big glass storefront, reclaimed wood furniture, and hanging Edison bulbs. Compare the two: You might not even know you’re in different spaces.
It’s no accident that these places look similar. Though they’re not part of a chain and don’t have their interior design directed by a single corporate overlord, these coffee shops have a way of mimicking the same tired style, a hipster reduction obsessed with a superficial sense of history and the remnants of industrial machinery that once occupied the neighbourhoods they take over. And it’s not just London and Manchester – this style is spreading across the world, from Bangkok to Beijing, Seoul to San Francisco.
It’s not just coffee shops, either. Everywhere you go, seemingly hip, unique spaces have a way of looking the same, whether it’s bars or restaurants, fashion boutiques or shared office spaces. A coffee roaster resembles a WeWork office space. How can all that homogeneity possibly be cool?
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