writing
Precursor: In the fall of 2021, I started wearing a slate-colored LL Bean vest that my college roommate neglected for a few months. This is where it started. I put that vest on over a black turtleneck I’d had for about a year already, paired with a black beanie. Sometimes a hoodie (black or brown, always zip up) under the vest if it was extra chilly. Plus, black wide leg jeans that became my favorite in this time period, and shoes that were probably the only visibly “cool” part of this ensemble. The zipper on those shoes has since broken. I didn’t think about this well-run machine of efficiency and sleekness that came in the form of repeatedly dressing in these specific clothes, at least for a few weeks. I just kept going. It was mainly just about dark colors, non-branded items, comfort on the way to mobility, and blending in. I made a routine out of running to the lake every morning, and (if you remember a past post of mine, at that point I did not enjoy cooking or being in the kitchen at all, but) I did start drinking smoothies and green drinks when I could. I enjoyed school and put more of myself into my schedule and assignments than I had in a while. On 1 December 2021, I synthesized this exploration into new territory (of routine, kickstarted by my clothing choices) into the term “hacker chic.” Now I want to share my findings with you:
Hacker chic is a term not everyone may be familiar with. (By the way, I wrote this prior to looking up the term on Google – to prove that it is not a real thing – and seeing that there was indeed an article on “retrofuturism in fashion” from 2022, which mentions hacker chic. I debated with myself, but ended up not reading it past one skim, nor anything else that may have come up in this Google search. As I said, this term came to me almost four years ago and I have wanted to write about it ever since.) In any case, maybe much explanation of what it exactly is, is not needed. It will become clear to you, dear reader, as the list goes on. Thus, this is the first argument for hacker chic - the power of the image that it conjures in one's mind without extensive information. You can see hacker chic, can’t you?
It is the recuperation of a tech x gorp aesthetic, but as something that is not only reserved for the likes of tech guys, or gorp guys, or just guys. Being interested in/simultaneously appalled and intrigued by the world of tech (which seems to get weirder and darker every day, but nonetheless provides a whole new domain of information about where our world is going, and where we’ve been before), can be signaled through clothing like anything else. Aligning oneself with one's interests, in the case of hacker chic, is not reserved for the people who are directly involved with these interests. Hacker chic is at least partially an argument for the intrigue that lies in the world of tech, minus the aesthetics and values of the men who rule it.
With hacker chic, there is no push towards the realm of Patagonia vests and grey-maxxing out of no other impulse than laziness. There are more subtle, and of course stylish ways to explore it. It is flexible. It molds itself to what you need it for, in that moment.
Watch how much easier it is to NoCal-pill yourself by drinking green smoothies and going on foggy runs in the morning. Your new gear will galvanize you to do so. Maybe you down 2 Red Bulls later in the day to get something done, but the argument still stands… Embody self sufficiency.
Listen to the Social Network soundtrack (or any Trent Reznor + Atticus Ross score) while doing any activity at all while assuming the identity of the hacker. Feel powerful. Maybe even learn to code to embody hacker chic in a more honest sense… but this is not necessary!
We’re talking Jesse Eisenberg as Zuck, not Zuck himself.
Interlude and counter: The thing about aesthetic “movements”, especially these days, is that through scrolling, you have access to not just That One Very Cool and Influential Image that lodges itself in your mind henceforth, thus changing your brain chemistry, but a whole host of similar images that do the same thing. Then you attempt to mimic the aesthetic presented, without doing so much as switching to different image-centric apps on your phone to verify your inspirations and gather them somewhere. You don’t learn where it came from or any of its significance. You recycle its significance in your own interpretation, watering it down through a shortened lifespan. So then why hacker chic?
Hacker chic feels like it has a short lifespan anyway. It is a way of dressing that could not have materialized any earlier than the dawn of technology. It is not a way of dressing that feels rooted in the world of fashion or even history, but rather in the world of recent affects and ideals. We as a society are quite entrenched in this world of technological ideals, so it doesn’t feel like there is much to “learn” about dressing like a hacker. It doesn’t feel like a flamboyant costume, just an archetype to embody.
And more on the archetype of the hacker. To hack the “system” is to reject it, as well as to think up smarter ways to use it. Especially as now that “system” is one that is indeed so ubiquitous and no longer as much of a hidden world to explore, the hacker archetype implies a more secret passageway. A hidden ideal. You are a spy performing a mission, hopefully for the good guys.
To dress like a hacker even amidst the current tyrannical, technocrat state of technology we find ourselves in is to refuse its orders and suggestions. You didn’t dress like a hacker because of the algorithm in any way. This way of dressing does not scream “cute”. It can be chic if you feel you are doing it correctly, but there’s no merit here and you won’t be given a gold star for dressing hacker chic.
To dress like a hacker but make it somehow look cool, chic, desirable at all, is a flex of style, without the visual correlation to styles or outfits that would connote you are “chronically online”.
As summed up in previous points, hacker chic is an argument for simplicity, for clarity of mind, and for physical well-being, fused into the choice to dress like a hacker. As stated above, it molds itself to what you use it for. It is a good option for when you do not know what to wear and feel at a loss for creativity. Then, the creativity sparks may just come through, as you imbue the uniform with power and clarity.
TenToday III: 10 Cases for Hacker Chic
1. You seriously start to consider bleaching your eyebrows again. The last time you did this was when you were a 19 year old on the precipice of “real” early twenties decadence and decay, living in your first apartment, during lockdown, with good friends in a city other than the one you grew up in. You were staring at a wide open, previously untouched space (on your forehead) that was begging for you to breathe vitality into it, or imply that vitality by taking it away! Obviously, this urged you towards upheaval of the personal aesthetic genre. Somehow, that year in lockdown generated more transformation and fun than even the first few novel months of college. You’ve now ordered the bleach.
2. You look closer at the fact that you don’t write long-form in your journal anymore. It’s been months and it’d be a stroke of naivety to keep telling yourself you’ve just been busy. You admit that you don’t get the same satisfaction out of it as you did just a couple of months ago.
3. But also, it’s true that you’ve been somewhat busier. Definitely compared to the first warmer months – a sprawl of days that blended into weeks. You just don’t feel the urge to put pen to paper, in long-form, in your journal at present. So you start to opt for laptop writing, at first out of curiosity of its efficacy (founded), and then as part of your routine. After all, another shift of the season is that you write for TenToday and post every Saturday.
4. For maybe the first time in your life, you give yourself time in your weekly schedule to cook meals. At least one per week. Addendum: you shop for groceries – real ones, not just the bits and bobs you end up with after you happen to walk into a deli to buy a Yerba Mate at 4 pm. You’d formerly exit with three different kinds of chocolate bar, some cheese that emitted a sophisticated aura, and a pack of mortadella slices (with no vision of the ultimate construction of these elements). Now, you may even leave with a bushel of greens, a meat that will eventually get cooked on a stove, and a plethora of seasonings. You don’t publicly pat yourself on the back for this development because you’ve kicked yourself secretly for years for your laziness. But hey, pat yourself on the back! Look at you!
5. You accidentally get your hair dyed the wrong shade (of red). Oops! Autumn is not the time to dwell, though, as all the leaves are falling. Worst time to hold onto a grudge, or hair color. So you let the new hair color slide. You were kind of bored of the old one anyway.
6. But you’re not bored in a general sense. Sure, it’s getting colder but that chill in the air is not yet the dry iciness that has you running to the confines of home to shake yourself into warmth and moisturize your hands. For now, you define the outside world by its crispness. You breathe it in deeply, you use the word “cozy” more often now, or at the very least think it. With the coziness comes a new TV show to watch, which you hype yourself up for when you get the time to indulge in it.
7. With this, your cigarette consumption has decreased to around one per day, probably because it is in fact a little harder to stew in the sun for hours now, but also because you enjoy breathing in crispness and fresh air more than smoke.
8. You’ve dropped your therapist after a relatively steady two years with her. It was almost too steady. This can be encapsulated by her admission to you, during your last session, that she had been let down that she didn’t feel a closeness between you two and kept herself wondering why that was. At some point, she began to sense a distance from you, and that “distance” plateaued and remained, never addressed. You felt it too, chalking it up to low compatibility because that’s sometimes how things go and waiting out some sessions before revealing your true desires. But also, wasn’t your relationship one of professionalism? It appeared you simultaneously craved a more spirited rapport while also continuing (quite unknowingly) to prevent it from happening. Again, it could just have been low compatibility. Or you’re just a stiff bitch.
9. Along with that honesty that came with admitting you were no longer (for now) a pen-to-paper journaller, came the realization that you weren’t as interested in… all the fretting that came with thinking (stewing, pondering, above all writing) about your life and issues. You’ve begun to embody, rather than plot and scheme. You never thought you’d totally be an embodier of your plans, at least not until you were a successful-person-in-your-thirties-making-it-look-easy-and-living-in-a-dream-house, naturally. But how do you get there anyway? Start. It happened without you realizing it. And it dawns on you on a weekend of looking at yourself too intensely in the mirror for more time than usual in different costumes and affects (halloweekend #1) that you’ve been walking out of the house with (only) the burden of your appearance weighing on you and your mind... But wasn’t there something else pressing that you needed to work out internally? … it appeared not. What about all those highly frustrating, testing, existential (but often inane) knots of worry about your life that made you question who you are and where you’re going once before ? Weren’t you a thinker? Weren’t you kind of… anxious ? Maybe once,,, but now all you were worried about was that you had suddenly become unattractive during a critical weekend of dressing up. You spend the rest of the weekend thanking god, thanking the universe, for that almost unnoticed change. When your biggest issue has changed from things that you can’t control into the fact that your stress-acne is flaring up (but will likely go away by next week), you’ve got it really good.
10. You start to favor your friends' apartments for parties and housewarmings over going to the club every weekend.