'Cool' to older guys like my Dad (born 1934) meant a form of jazz.  Kids nowadays say 'cool' as an alternative to 'wicked', which sounds nebbish coming from the lips of anyone over, say, 17 (IMO).  I remember a parting conversation I once had with John - literally in the doorway - about Oasis (once much beloved by my daughters; they got over it), along the lines of 'well, they're all mods now', y'know, in terms of floppy hair, short hair, polo shirt, desert boots etc.  'Cool' to me is stepping round to the back of the shop and hearing jazz being played very discreetly: 'discreet' is 'cool' in my book.  'Cool' is the way a Frenchman serves a little bottle of Perrier in a bar halfway up the Rue Lepic.  'Cool' is the Italian guy in Mestre, waiting to catch the bus to work, wearing a sand-coloured suit and wearing it without fuss.  'Cool' to me - in an off-handed kind of way - is my Dad digging the MJQ at Nottingham Odeon way back, Marion McPartland in New York - it might have been the 'Village Gate' - and Lee Konitz in some smoky Leicestershire pub (again, way back). 
'Cool' to me - like it or not - is Hoagy Carmichael in his prime, McQueen and Brynner near the beginning of 'The Magnificent Seven', exchanging gestures, looks and few words, Mastroianni with a long scarf draped around his neck, Juliette Greco wearing black... 
Eames was cool, so was Gropius.
What isn't cool is over-exposure.  Keep it underground, GG, keep it underground.  Once it becomes respectable, as the man said, you can take it anywhere but it ain't worth taking...

That first shot of Connery, lighting his cigarette in 'Dr.No'.  Bond soon lost his 'cool' after that, the Robert Brownjohn period: it became a subject for bubblegum cards and cap pistols... 

Edward Woodward as 'Callan'. 
Edward Fox as the Jackal.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, cool.

Me neither, AGQ; far from it.

Sinatra probably knew he was cool.  But Dino was cooler.  That's because he just was and didn't give a stuff.  Sinatra had to work at it.  Once you have to work at it you can't be it.  And you can lose it: Eric Clapton being a case in point.  Charlie Watts has never been entirely cool - although he might have been if he'd been big band and not a Stone.  McQueen wasn't always cool - all that racing driver shit - and Paul Newman never.  Farting about on Democratic platforms is never going to make you cool - as Bruce Springsteen can testify.  JFK was effortlessly cool whilst being simultaneously the biggest shit to walk God's earth - or am I thinking of his old feller?  Bobby was a nerd in spite of having a decent hairdo. 

Hubert Swaine is cool for the simple reason he hasn't declared himself on this forum. 

Come on, who was 'hip'?  Lesshavealonglistofjiveassmuthafuckersrightnow...

C'mon, Alex, chill out!

.... after all, we are all writing stuff on a menswear chatroom...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfFQQ01KbFk&feature=related

Capitols


.... the OP was so cool....

... we don't need all this jive talk... don't get me into signifyin'...

... don't wanna blow my cool...



... you know man, we's da same...

Hip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppwXQlTLXY&feature=channel

Lenny Bruce

The term 'Cool' is certainly debased today, there's no doubt about that. And more than being debased it's indeed pretty meaningless now just like the OP states.

But what other language do we have, those of us who've stayed the long course with all this?

It is kind of affected by now & real timewarp stuff... 'Suss' is another word like Cool which you can play with & not ever really get near.

Fun as ever to talk about all this. As JS has said before - All you can do is to kick these things around.

Alex's point is good - It is all about image & presentation of self. An idealised version of oneself. You at your best and as you'd wish to be. Is that fake? And if so then what isn't?

I like 'Cool'. I like that idea of being one step back watching the show go on. Critically aware and evaluating everything, linking it to context and meaning. 'Cool' is an informed position.

"I've seen all on offer & I'm not impressed at all" - As somemody once sang.

IMO Alex is cool.

Jim

Last edited by Just Jim (2009-04-15 01:46:32)

When I first went to J.Simons I quickly grasped the fundamentals of 'the look', but I was also completely aware that a key part of the whole look/outlook/lifestyle associated with these clothes, certainly from the London perspective, was 'hip' or 'cool', and I was all too aware that I was a wet behind the ears provincial boy, eager to please and smile and everyone, and rather too intimidated by a range of people who came from worlds so different to mine. I was sweet but uncool. As I get older I think I am less sweet and a little bit cooler. For me cool is often a metropolitan thing - Londoners are different, even the ignorant uncool ones, and the cool sensibility, which so obviously DOES exist, is a completely urban, even capital city, phenomenon. JS was/is cool and so many of his customers are. Some of the characters who used to come in when I worked there - in the 80s - well let's just say it was a steep learning curve. I'm from Liverpool and they made me feel like a country boy with straw between my teeth.

JS I think gets frustrated because the culture that underpinned the jazz-Ivy connection has completely been eliminated. None of us really understands it but you recognise it on those rare occasions when you see it. The very fact that this is a medium through which you communicate through words primarily makes us all completely unhip as JS and the whole hipster mentality is all about instinct, suss and musicality. The truth is that this world did once exist and there were musicians and fellow travellers who lived the cool life. This elusive elite world was that of the modernist, which completely explains and justifies JS and his contemporaries absolute disinterest and disregard for all later manifestations of 'mod' in all of their aburdly unhip manifestations.

GG