Over the weekend, the Economist profiled President-Elect Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner. You might assume we liked the article because of this passage: "The current treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, is reworking the $700 billion bail-out plan on the fly" (emphasis ours), but that statement, for reasons that should be obvious, doesn't make us optimistic. Actually, this was the section that caught my eye:

Mr Geithner looks a lot younger than his 47 years (though not as young as he did before the crisis began). He skateboards and snowboards and exudes a sort of hipster-wonkiness, using “way” as a synonym for “very” as in “way consequential” and occasionally underlining his point with the word “fuck”. In temperament he seems similar to Mr Obama: he is suspicious of ideology, questions received wisdom, likes a competition of ideas and is keenly aware of how uncertain the world is.

In our Shop by Lifestyle section, we've had a "Hipster" lifestyle. Some have construed this to mean that we think we have stuff that would appeal to the anti-establishment, trucker hat-wearing, Pabst Blue Ribbon-drinking, vinyl record-collecting, dripping-with-irony "hipsters". That was never our intended audience.

In our worldview, "Hipster" refers to a psychographic profile for a gentleman that appreciates the finer things in life, but eschews many of the traditional rules of fashion or etiquette in order to create a style all his own. Our hipster might be a 40 year old guy who chooses to wear Agave jeans, Michael Toschi SUV2s, an Ike Behar casual shirt, and a vintage watch (for irony). This is a stark contrast to the Old School gentleman that wears a conservative suit, shirt & tie to work, or the Professor who wears a V-neck sweater over a sport shirt with cords and loafers.

From publicly available photos, Geithner's wardrobe is what I would consider an Old School/Wall Street fusion, but we bet he's in jeans & a t-shirt on weekends. If the Economist can refer to a Secretary of the U.S. Treasury as a "hipster", we're in good company.