Sacramento Magazine really knows how to treat local fashion bloggers. First they invite me to a fancy lunch at their offices and put my website up on a huge HDTV just to pick my brain about blogging. Soon after that, they’re gussying me up and sending me fancy photographers to give me a full page interview about Painfully Hip for the front of their most popular issue, November’s “Best Of” issue. Before you know it, I’m scoring free tickets to their big event: The Sacramento Magazine Best Of Party (billed as Sacramento’s biggest party and boasts the most Sacra-lebrities you could ever want to meet) which includes a shit ton of free swag, innumerable wine tastings, and more free gourmet food than you could possibly imagine consuming. I am one lucky girl.

In spite of all that, I (yes, me) completely shunned my responsibility of finding a sock-knocking outfit for said event until 2 days before. And then, I panic.

Enter the lovely Mai of Ruche. She offers to overnight ship me this gorgeous satin minidress out of the goodness of her dear heart. Thanks, Mai!

makeup by Jesse at Bare Escentuals
photos by Rory of AwesomeAllDay

I’m not usually one for purple, but this fabric caught the light in surprising ways (and even looked good straight from the package). I love these rich, royal, sovereign colors… and now I’m regretting not have gotten my photo taken with the Sacramento Kings.

I am usually down to respond to any request that presupposes the fact that I have no shame. So when my fashion designer friend Jamaica sent out a cry for help – needing someone who could wear all white (fashion suicide!) and tap-dance themselves and several signs across the front of the stage of the biggest nightclub venue in Downtown Sacramento – I was SO THERE. Nevermind the fact that I haven’t officially tap-danced since I was, well, 7 years old. That’s beside the point.

‘Twas The Beatles’ White Album Show at Harlow’s: Sixteen bands covering the entire album, and me, traipsing my little ass back and forth around the stage with a sign announcing each band’s name.

Here’s what I wore (spoiler: I cheated and wore cream with black accents).

eyelet minidress: $20 at Winners
knit tights: $3 at some cheezy mall hole
heeled brogues: borrowed from my sister (thrifted)
black knit beret: a Belgian souvenir from Eve

Jamaica’s fashion show from her line, Sapphire Cordial featured an opulent parade of serene models in alabaster sixties-inspired dresses, wielding refreshingly innocuous protest signs. I couldn’t find many good photos, but believe me, it was lovely.

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Apparently Team Painfully Hip were cursed on the night of the iPod Battle. How is it we couldn’t win by jitterbugging savagely and in perfect sync to an obscure Nigerian tribal dance jam and then shit-talking at the judge all night long?? Not only that, but the full outfit photos of the Studio 54-esque vintage dresses we bought that day somehow got mysteriously erased from Eve’s camera and all that was left on it were some smug photos of the unofficial winners in their oversized wrestling belts (the cops in Sacramento think that Fun is illegal and shut the bar down at 12:30 for a slight over-capacity situation before a decision was reached – I guess there is such a thing as too much publicity).

However, it was really fun competing against the other most stylish duo in the city, Trisha and Olivia of Pretty Trashy and Bows & Arrows:

UPDATE: Here’s a hilarious photo collage from SacTown magazine where they describe me as “doing her best Paris (Hilton) pose.” Ugh.

Feast on eye candy Jillian and Matt at the local bro bar on her 21st birthday:

This hilarious article popped up in the Arts and Culture section of the local News & Review this week. Not only was Painfully Hip mentioned as the authority on hipster fashion, I also heard a rumor that they were planning on asking me to write the entire article. So I guess I might be the foremost authority on local hipsterism in GENERAL. Should I be flattered, or mortified? I can’t decide, but apparently it seems you’ve come to the right place.

hip·ster (hip´ster) n. [slang]
1. Someone who is hip.
2. Creative but annoying 20-something poseur.
3. Total jhole dbag.

Last year, Time Out New York magazine declared that East Coast hipsters must die. Earlier this year, Southern California’s LAist referred to hipsters as “assholes,” superficial “soldiers of fortune of style” that lack heart. Even here at SN&R, there was for years an unwritten ban on the word itself appearing in these pages.

So who the hell are these hipsters, and why are they so annoying? The stop-sign-running fixed-gear cyclist in tight jeans, are they a hipster? If so, jerk. The barista that messed up your latte, too busy clamoring about the latest Justice single? Definitely a hipster, definitely a pain. Cool indifference, slacker nonchalance, self-prescribed martyrdom—just because something’s mainstream doesn’t mean it’s to be rejected. Sacramento isn’t My Lai; you don’t have to kill a scene to save a scene.

But in spite of everything, do hipsters deserve hate? Whether it’s jealousy, personal vendetta or media censure, they get a bum rap. There’s lots to admire—thriftiness, utilitarian instincts, fun-loving playfulness. Hipsters are puppies: one minute, the apple of your pop-culture eye; the next, gnawing on the couch, pissing on your shoes. Hipsters set trends, then kill ’em, but in the end, you still love the bastards.

So let’s focus on the positive: Our convenient, low-cost, have-it-all American life is over. Laters, brah. Change will be hard for us nine-to-five, pizza and Blockbuster mainstreamers. Maybe hipsters can help?

Don’t cringe. The Dow nearly dropped 10 percent in June. We’re gonna need help.

Carbon footprint
It’s obvious Sac hipsters own the solution to the impending energy crisis: There’s nowhere to park in this damn town.

No, not cars. There’s no room for bikes: Every tree, pole and sign was taken for a block at a recent Midtown concert. Ten-speeds, fixies, junkers—don’t these kids drive? Lock up to a chain-link fence, head off to the show.

Inside, it was standing-room-only, crowd trickling out the door. A young guy plucked at a 12-string electric, a vintage metronome’s cadence in the background: click, click, ring, click. Outside, there were more bikes, some 15 or so on the patio—what’s going on here?

A decent gathering of 50 made it to that evening’s gig, which was at Atelier, an independent clothing store and designer workshop. Very few revelers used gasoline. A recap: one-to-one bike-to-alt-bro ratio. That’s a zero-carbon footprint.

Partying
With all this impending fiscal doom, how will anyone afford partying? The $30 cover-charge crowd will die. Underground party scenes will live.

Party-pic Web sites like The CobraSnake, The Friendattack and Philthy document these clandestine scenes. On the local front, shutterbug Nicholas Avey’s Takeover Tokyo photo log is a worthy addition to the cannon of hipster party-pic URLs. Avey documents a local alt Sac scene where the cover charges are minimal, if nil; the drinks are cheap; and the music is feverishly independent.

And the revelers he photographs, while definitely alt, aren’t shameless. No dude sporting a bowl cut and jellies. Or product placement in the form of dancers dressed as Wrigley’s gum or the like.

Avey updates Takeover Tokyo a few times a week, including after his occasional Monday-night deejay set, Take Flight, at The Press Club. Obama has a vision for change; hipsters have a vision for revelry. We trust that their respective prophecies will endure.

Collapse of slave labor
Investor and consumer confidence is at an all-time low, oil costs are at an all-time high and the government’s running out of tricks to keep the stock market afloat. The crash is no longer a question of if, but when.

This means that the days are numbered for cheaply manufactured Third World clothing imports. Hipsters—whether by happenstance or clairvoyance—see this endgame, and local shops, like the aforementioned Atelier, and designers like Pretty Trashy have turned recycling unwanted thrift and vintage goods into a livelihood. Hip designers give clothes a second chance, screen-printing images on old shirts or reconfiguring outfits by hand, stitch and needle. Gotta make things last.

And if you’re not design-savvy, go to the source, thrift stores on boulevards peripheral to Midtown/downtown. Local designer Liz Liles did exactly this, scouring outlets like Thrift Town, Deseret Industries and Goodwill on a regular basis. She also taught herself how to sew by machine, and soon will open her own indie/vintage boutique.

So don’t cry when your local Anthropologie or J. Crew goes under. Take a pre-emptive strike against designer jeans, Marc Jacobs and the like and support secondhand stores and boutiques—or do it yourself. If you need help differentiating the fashionable from the faux pas, check local blog Painfully Hip (www.painfullyhip.com).

Death of the daily newspaper
After seven years of President George W. Bush, you need a good bullshit detector to tell good news from the bad. A healthy dose of sarcasm, wit and counterculture is needed to weed the spin from the smarts. Hipster blogs and web sites can provide the savvy to avoid being Rickrolled by corporate media.

The most popular hipster site online is Hipster Runoff, run by Carles and purportedly based out of Brooklyn. Now, HRO won’t provide cutting-edge political analysis—or barely any news at all, for that matter—but a week of reading HRO will get you up to speed with alt diction and educated but smarmy takes on pop-culture trends.

Consider a recent post on electroclash, a new wave electronic-dance music genre: “Should we be afraid of Electro taking over humans? Are you more afraid of China, Iran, or Electro? Maybe this [fear] will help us learn to live with the electro recession,” Carles writes. Don’t sell your soul to Ladytron, Le Tigre or the Faint. Don’t let Bush invade Iran before Obama takes over. Cut Copy is the coolest. M83’s“Kim & Jesse” is 2008’s summer-pop anthem.

Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense soon enough. Go buy a courier bag and some shutter shades. When the shit hits the fan, it will be a cool, leisurely slide …”