How to Become Part of London's New Celebrity Hipster Elite

Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images

London's young A-listers are now dressing and socialising like you were two years ago. Or, more honestly, like the cast of Dalston Superstars were two years ago. Mainly this seems to be down to Cara Delevingne, Harry Styles and Rita Ora – the Holy Trinity of people your little sister thinks are cool in 2013. I have no idea how the frontman of the world's biggest boyband, the most desirable model on the planet and a former Eurovision contestant ended up dressing like 2010 Goldsmiths alumni, but survey the pap shots in the showbiz media and you'll see what I mean. For London's young party elite, Boss suits have been replaced with Boy London beanies, smiling for paps swapped for the kind of surly faux-disinterest you'll recognise from tumblr selfies. Basically, THE SOCIAL ILLUMINATI CAUGHT UP.

It's easy to sneer at them, but they're the ones raking in the money, fame and bedpost notches while the people they've modelled their looks on are at home with their cats updating their Slayer logo blogs. And it's not just the people who've got Karl Lagerfeld's BBM pin, the proles have caught up too, exchanging their trackies and Michael Buble albums for Rik Owens bondage trousers and trap slang. Today, everyone who lives within a city in Britain looks like a hipster. Look at your little sister: she saw the cast of Made In Chelsea skateboarding, launching public transport initiatives with Professor Green and starting streetwear brands and became "a hipster". Cher Lloyd has sea punk hair. will.i.am wears stupid little gloves = hipster. Every other week there's a hipster on Take Me Out and every T4 presenter since Steve Jones fled the country has been a hipster. Unless you're Henry Kissinger or Dave Navarro, you're basically implicated. So let's roll with it, right? If the A-list want the hipster world you spent so long pretending doesn't exist, who gives a fuck? There's at least eight months before they move on, so you might as well enjoy eight months of gak, paparazzi and your friends telling you how they met inconsequential, but probably quite nice people like Harry Styles and that crap Kosovan version of Rihanna. So here's how to bullshit your way into London's new social elite, while still rocking your Hilfiger beanie.

HOW TO BEHAVE
You behave this way: You're stuck in a cycle of barely-lucid inebriated misery. You claim that "the scene is dead" and that you don't really like going out any more when you're doing bumps on the bus on the way to the same hole you've been languishing in for the last three years. You say that really, all you want to do is move to New York or away to the country and that "all this sex and drugs shit is just because I'm drunk and sad". But you won't move, because you're too poor, lazy and comfortable to do so.

They behave this way: The entry-level celebrity hipsters of today keep things relatively sane and straight. They've mastered the balancing act necessary to keep the paps interested in 2013 without publicly nurturing the kind of drug or drink habit that scares corporate money away. They're supposedly very rock 'n' roll, but they're not rocking up at the Sheraton at 7AM with Chloe Sevigny, they're quietly discussing the latest Bond film in the smoking area of the Groucho with James Corden and Rio Ferdinand. Rather than getting their goons to break paparazzi jaws, they're flicking V-signs at them and smiling the whole time they're doing it.

My advice: Stop being so bitter about that art foundation not getting you a commission from Nike and just tag along with these guys. Become a hanger on rather than a hat stand. Your model is: the people who chased the dragon with Doherty in 2005, rather than those who rode its scaly back to Parisian oblivion in 2013. Follow that advice and you'll find yourself referred to in a free-sheet photo caption as "unknown male friend" or "worse for wear blonde" in no time, like this playsuited fucking Zelig, who seems to have wormed his way into a position where he gets to go to the kind of party you'd talk about for years every night of the week.

WHERE TO HANG OUT
You hang out here: If you're relatively new to the city and still looking for adventure on Friday nights, rather than collapsing with weary fatalism into the same old routine, then you'll probably be found at the community arts venues, rooftop cocktail bars and converted pool halls of South London. If you're jaded, then it's the toilet cubicles, kebab shops and converted pool halls of East London for you. If you don't live in London, you probably wish you did.

They hang out here: If you're enraged by the previous paragraph and often utter the phrase "trendy London bollocks", the epicentre of what you hate is Dalston. For whatever reason, the entry-level celebrity hipsters have decided to invade this simpering hell of "creatives" looking into their iPhones while they talk to you and youth TV presenters doing bumps of gak in council estate playgrounds.

My advice: They may be slumming it at the Alibi, but their hearts will always yearn for Movida;they like lots of ice in their drinks, carpeted dancefloors that won't ruin their shoes and not being bear-hugged by hallucinating kitchen fitters from Loughton. So when the cheques start coming in from the sponsors desperate to get their products into Rita Ora's Instagram feed and the tabloids you sold compromising photos to, put half of it aside. You'll need it to buy clothes that will allow you entry to the sort of shitty West End clubs these guys will eventually retreat to, the kinds of places where the Cristal daiquiris are always either free or picked up by junior sheikhs with indecent assault convictions.

Image from Dalston Superstars

WHAT TO INDULGE IN
You take: Anything that "Rico" has got his hands on that week: Persil-laced coke, MDMA dyed pink by the lottery ticket it came in, acid the guys from that New York band brought over with them, moral panic skunk and enough cans of Red Stripe to build a Frank Gehry building with.

They take: A more traditional approach to their chemical follies. I don't doubt that they take cocaine, but is that even a drug any more? If it is, it's one for Nissan salesmen at Christmas parties and rugby league players in Swansea nightclubs. Perhaps if you're going at it like Ike Turner in the 80s it might still seem decadent, but not if it's a few keys of your A&R guy's stash backstage at V.

My advice: The shadows of Doherty and Winehouse seem to loom large over London, serving as a reminder that while the hard stuff might help convince a few members of the public you're a hedonistic genius, it inevitably shortens your lifespan or sends you straight to reality TV purgatory. Where the generation before them took inspiration from Rimbaud, the current crop seems to prefer 80s-style corporate debauchery. So just sit tight, keep pace with the rest of the powder peloton and bring some magnesium along to keep pictures of your face turning into an Escher drawing out of the Sundays. You don't want to freak anyone out.

WHO TO BEFRIEND
You befriend: While you might go around waxing lyrical about your "people" and how much they mean to you, chances are you're only friends with them because you work with them, or they occasionally respond to coked-up booty calls. It's a jungle out there, and you need as many people who are willing to put up with your bullshit as you can get. But ask yourself this: If an unlicensed cab driver stabbed you to death tomorrow, how many of your "mates" would grieve beyond the cursory Facebook update?

They befriend: The same type of person, but of a higher social rank – the people whose families own the publishing companies that own the style magazines that your mates are interning at. But here's the thing: While Kanye might allow a couple of ex-T4 presenters to get a picture with him at an LFW after-party, he doesn't really know who the fuck they are. He probably just thinks they're competition winners, that Jameela Jamil is a PR girl, that Matt Smith is a mixologist. However, being British, the entry-level celebrity hipsters know their place, and that place is somewhere around the middle of the sidebar of shame, lodged in between Kim Kardashian getting out of a car and Lizzie Cundy getting out of the sea.

My advice: For some reason, a lot of them also seem to be involved in jus 4 da lulz homoerotic relationships – Cara and Rita calling each other "wifey", Styles and Grimshaw wearing matching outfits. Whether they're trying to shock people isn't for me to say, but if that's the case in a modern-day Britain of totally legal same-sex relationships, then we're probably not the advanced society we like to think we are. That said, if they're doing it, that's probably your best way in. You call it cheating your own conscience, I call it playful sexual peacocking that'll never lead to an exchange in bodily fluids. Welcome to your sexless future.

WHAT TO LISTEN TO
You Listen to: You pride yourself on your ear for finding the new shit and the range of music that your ear is willing to embrace. Right now, you're probably into Detroit tech, Chicago drill, Iceage, the new Rustie, the old Rashad, "Turn Off The Lights" by Future, Jeremih, most of the stuff Bok Bok plays and the least popular output of a couple of older acts, like "Shake" Shakir or Fleetwood Mac.

They listen to: Music that literally nobody else likes – the kind of acts that record labels and fashion houses are blowing more money on than The Replacements ever made in their entire career. They like anything that sounds a bit "glam", meaning that, for some reason, they all love The Kills. Seriously, the only people who like The Kills are entry-level celebrity hipsters and Spanish guys who drink Jack Daniel's out of the bottle on the tube.

My advice: Despite the fact that there are pictures in Tatler of supermodels in Comme Des Fuckdown beanies wigging out to Machinedrum sets at Boiler Room, there are still brands out there who think that One Night Only and Jake Bugg are the people to represent them to the planet's youth. Those brands inhabit the same world as the entry-level celebrity hipsters, so if you really want to be au fait with the DJ selections at Fashion Week after-parties, just steal your 14-year-old niece's iPod and pay attention to the bands whose labels have enough money to advertise them on the tube.

Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images

WHAT TO WEAR
You wear: Whatever you fucking want. Stuff that looks like an American teenager wore it in the 1980s. Your pyjamas.

They wear: This is somewhat gender dependent. If they're a girl, chances are they're gonna be pretty much "on trend", because they set the trends. All those girls wearing beanies in the Trafford Centre? Ora and Delevingne started that. They dress wacky to pick up jpeg inches, which is fashion, which is cool.

The men, however… well, they're a lot less inspirational. I became kind of fascinated with that picture above a few weeks ago, they were at an NME Awards after-party dressed like this. They look like the proprietors of small town vintage clothes shops. I guess they're trying to look like mods, but it's pretty much impossible to dress like a mod these days without ending up looking like an Eastern European Oasis fan.

My advice: In this day and age, when every cool kid is listening to Riff Raff freestyles and Omar-S mixes, the people we are told are cool are dressing like this. Harry Styles in his weird Office winklepickers. Proudlock's streetwear range. That blonde Zelig guy in his playsuit. Fuck it, why not just go the whole hog and wear whatever you think makes you look like the biggest prick? I'll leave the details to you, just make sure you're wearing spats.

WHAT TO CREATE
You create: Nothing of any worth, ever.

They create: Ditto, but with a lot more money wasted on it.

Follow Clive on Twitter: @thugclive

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