Cool as a concept has various strains and manifestations and therefore must have diverse evolutionary paths. For its evolution in the West I do think that McCracken has highlighted a key concept related to the subject: the principle of individuality. His trace, then, of cool as it relates to individuality may serve to give us understanding as well.
With the displacement of the aristocracy came the emergence of two groups who developed the “very first expressions of hyper-individualistic, subversive style”[1]: The Bohemian artist and the Dandy. The Bohemians were French subversives who participated in the underground literary movements in Paris and other major fashionable cities throughout Europe. McCracken states that they were “more socially conscious and politically minded than their cohorts.”[2] The Bohemian was a marginalized individual with limited ties. They were wanderers, vagabonds, travelers who associated themselves with various sorts of anti-establishment protests through the arts (literature, music, painting, etc.). Their unconventional lifestyles, though largely developed within communities, are considered the first individualist movement in the history of Western civilization.
Their counterparts, the Dandies, are less consumed with politics and social causes as they are with fashion and style.[3] Dandyism was born out of the bourgeois downfall in London during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As middle-class men emerged into a life of wealth and prestige they began to imitate the formal aristocracy in their ostentatious appearance and style. McCracken gives a good summary of their culture when he writes:
Born in London around the 1790s, the dandy might be seen as the first ironic hipster. Though mostly from the middle class, dandies dressed and acted as if they were the richest, most gentlemanly aristocrats in England. An outgrowth of the new power of the merchant and industrial classes, the dandies wore all the latest fashions, walked around with white gloves and canes, and devoted hours each day to personal grooming, cleanliness, and primping. They were mimicking the aristocracy, brazenly appropriating the haughty, aloof, superior mind-set of the upper classes that were simultaneously being ousted from power (and frequently beheaded) across the channel in France.[4]
The Dandy and the Bohemian represent the first two strains of “hipsters” in western history, but they paved the way for what would eventually become a nation of hipsters: America.
[1] McCracken.
[2] Ibid.
[3] This is not to say that there were not some political overtones among dandyism. It has been argued that their adherence to aristocratic lifestyles was as much an appeal to feudal systems over and against rising egalitarian thought during the late 18th century. It is ironic that middle-class emergents would fight against the very thought that allowed them to emerge, but this too is characteristic, in some sense, of cool.
[4] McCracken.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 