After visiting NYC a month ago I couldn’t help but think that Williamsburg’s Ironic Fashion Movement (IFM) arrived a little late in the game. Trucker hats adorn bedheaded tops of hipsters, a slight tweak to the left or right, denoting gang status and hood. Ha. But it’s all so reminiscent of some other time, some other place, hmmmm…. Ah! Athens, Georgia, 1996. I remember it well. Williamsburg is getting the cred for this recent boom in wearable irony, but bullshit I say, it started nearly 10 years ago in Athens, Georgia, and yes, I was one of the pioneers. “Blue collar chic,” as it is described, was a worshiped way of life in Athens, truly inspired by poverty and alcohol. It was a fashion derived from utility. You had to wear a hat if you worked in a restaurant. Ironic trucker hats were an obvious choice, as were the durable gas station uniform shirts you could find in any thrift stores. Enhanced by local bars like the Atomic and Manhattan that facilitated the Irony Lifestyle with weekly PBR and Schlitz specials, we collectively breathed life into what is now thought to be a Brooklyn-born trend.

Not so.

During the latter half of the nineties hipsters evacuated Athens for places like NYC to take stabs at greater destinies, or simply to escape alcohol deluded lifestyles. That’s how trucker hats got to NYC. An exported cultural lifestyle transplanted and re-fashionized by the NYC hip-elite. So if trucker hats are so 5 minutes ago, they’re actually 8 years ago.

My original trucker hat, circa 1996:

Buy a trucker hat.
Or make one out of garbage.

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