Parisian Hipsters Need a Home

Paris has played host to youth subcultures for decades. After WWII, garishly dressed Zazous frequented the burgeoning nightclub scene, swinging to jazz, bebop, and ragtime music. But big bands and jukeboxes eventually gave way to turntables in 1953 when Régine Zylberberg—the owner of Le Whisky à Gogo—established the modern-day standard for nightclubs and discothèques with loud, seamless music. Rock soon replaced jazz as the anthem of youth, and Zazous yielded to the latest trends. Branchés—a subculture marked by fashionable attire and a similar disregard of the petit bourgeois values of hard work and financial advancement—filled the void.

    Youth culture made waves in Paris in May of 1968 when a series of student strikes swept the nation in a challenge to conservative morality. The themes of sexual liberation and youth empowerment emphasized by these riots translated to the club scene. Clubbing culture blossomed at the onset of the 70s as crazy parties mixed unconventional aspects of music; eclectic pop icons Mick Jagger, Santana, Kraftwerk, and the New York Dolls provided the soundtracks and inspired fashions of such affairs.

    The 80s ushered in the mythic era of Le Palace—a theater turned nightclub that became a haunt of the branché scene. Les Bains Douches—yet another club that catered to the subculture—opened just a few months later. Paris had become a hipster playground. Meanwhile, Jean Paul Gautier indulged Parisian youth with clothing collections inspired by pop culture and street fashion; the branché lifestyle became more commercialized as businesses realized the potential of the young market.

    The following decade saw the hipster crowd transform from disdainful nihilists to ambitious imitators. Branché trends flooded popular culture, and the message of the lifestyle gave way to its fashions. Daft Punk, Cassius, and Bob Sinclar comprised the playlist at highly cultivated hipster parties and simultaneously saturated the airwaves of mainstream radio. Branché was no longer a respected youth crowd—in fact, the term soon came to denote a mocking, pejorative attitude about the fads associated with hipsters. With the dissolution of such an established, fashion-forward subculture that thrived on underground music, the avant-garde slowly ceased to be the driving force behind Parisian culture.

    The new millennium has witnessed Paris’s failure to absorb minimal techno and therefore a breakdown of Paris’s ability to foster youth culture. Few musical artists have emerged from the city of late, and clubs that dare play innovative dance music struggle financially. In fact, on June 14, 2007, Le Pulp—a lesbian club and staple hipster hangout—closed permanently. A year later, Le ParisParis—another nightlife pillar that had welcomed hipsters from all horizons—closed as well. As budget airlines and high-speed trains make London and Berlin increasingly accessible, the fate of Parisian nightlife is depressingly unsure.

    An underground dance music genre that mixes disco, techno, punk rock, and glitch music is a brief ray of hope for a hipster presence in Paris. But as representative artists like Justice gain a larger following in the UK rather than in their mother country, the neo-dandy, avant-garde youth presence for which Paris is known seems to be waning.