I got fooled again. Having just bumped into a long-lost friend on Rue St Honore, my spirits now agreeably elevated, I was drawn to this chap crossing the street with a cool nonchalance that signaled "hipster". He had the swagger of a Shoreditch scenester with the matching vintage-store jacket, trousers rolled up just to the right height, retro chunky shoes circa 1989, the omnipresent beard and the sensitive eyes of a creative person. There was something so wrong yet so right about the look that my "hipdar" (hipster radar) instantly flagged him up as a suspicious character worth investigating...
As it turned out I double bluffed my own self: I projected irony where there was none. The poor fellow was so clueless as to what I wanted when asked for his picture (not speaking the same language didn't help) that he actually reached for my camera thinking I was a tourist in need of a snap shot outside Comedie Francaise. His jacket was in fact something his mother picked out for him, the shoes really date back from 1989 and the short trousers just a lazy response to overlong pant lengths. While he couldn't have been more sweet and accommodating (and very very bemused) I sauntered off with burning ears and a huge grin between them...Very happy indeed to have been fooled by a total fashion (male) ingenue. The very fact that he wasn't a self-conscious hipcat (helped by his peculiar gait and his confidence,) made him even more cool then any East End arty type...
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