1. Pink spaghetti strap. Light denim jeans rolled up. Sensible walking sandals. Missed it? She’s not wearing CROCs. Being a small town hipster/progressive/alt basically means avoiding the pratfalls of normal small town fashion/J.C. Penny’s 2007 spring catalog.

2. Pearl button shirt. Tight Wrangler’s. Round Up Ready Seed Cap. Bolo Tie. Belt buckle advertising Right to Life. Small town hipsters—by virtue of their Grandpa the Farmer’s closet—aim for that ironic rural look but overshoot it by being too authentic. They don’t look cool/Spin subscriber. They look ready to till the North 40.

3. Golf socks, baseball cap of the Florida Marlins, polka-dotted Las Vegas lounge-shirt, possibly a pair of mid-thigh loose-fitting, cotton shorts. Since this small town hipster rarely gets to thrift store in Mankato, he buys clothing in piece-meal, never really remembering what he owns, and thus developing a conflicted, schizophrenic style. Bottom line: he doesn’t understand the concept of an “outfit”/cohesion. So while all these items on their own MAY appear cool, together they suggest the sort of person lost wandering the aisles of Mills Fleet Farm.

4. White cotton dress from the 1960s. Brown twig tiara. Lots of blue mascara. Confused look as to why she’s not the coolest-looking-girl at the festival. This one is sort of sad. Small town hipsters don’t dress really cool, so much as the polemical opposite of what girls in their high school wear (jeans/cross-country team T-shirt, snowmobile jackets). This means they will dress like a wood nymph. Which gets them points back home. But at music festival, just makes them look anachronistic and sort of chubby.

5. Blue jean shorts (normal length). Black athletic shoes. Weezer concert shirt. No hat. Since boring fashion standards are oppressive in a small town, your identity is what you can put on your T-shirts. So the leaning-toward-hipster kid will dress like everyone else back home, except instead of advertising the new 2nd baseman for the Twins or something about “nuts” that is actually an advertisement for the next town over’s auto repair joint, he’ll wear a hip, “concert” T-shirt. At home, this is edgy. In urban area, he gets lost into shuffle. Goes home defeated. Becomes a Methodist Minister.

-Dunstan McGill