In a perhaps inevitable development, The Hipsters, who lo these many years have resided in Brooklyn in close proximity to The Ultra-Orthodox, have adopted the signature black headgear as their own. “Called either a ‘black hat’ or Borsalino, for the style’s most famous and expensive brand, the simple hat is most commonly associated with ultra-Orthodox non-Hasidic Jews, as well as members of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the Hasidic group based in Crown Heights,” the Times reports. “But in recent months, the quasi-religious hat has not only popped up on the other side of Williamsburg, where skinny jeans and canvas sneakers still rule, but also in Cole Haan advertisements as a secular fashion accessory.”
This seems like a nice thing, as long as fashion-world balkanization isn’t totally abolished: As you can see from our custom-built image, the rise of the foot-length maxi skirt as this summer’s defining silhouette has some potentially dangerous implications if you are fearful of a hipster-hasidic supernova-esque clash.
Culture Hopping in a Fedora [NYT]
The Floor’s the Limit [NYMag]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.