Unpackaging London's Hated ‘Hipster Model,’ Ricki Hall

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Yesterday the Sunday Times Magazine did one of those things—you know those things, those posh magazine things—where they ask someone you have never heard of to talk you through the minutiae of their day. "I wake up and salute the sun and have a glass of hot water," that sort of thing. Because it's always that, isn't it? Always wholesome. You never see those articles start with, "Wake up: two wanks to try and shake off the hangover then I get up and have to have a cold shower because my fucking housemate has used all the hot water again, Jesus fucking Christ, Pat, it's all over the floor as well, do you even know how to take a shower mate, fucking Christ." Or: "Breakfast: one old slice of Domino's, taken cold." Full disclosure: the Sunday Times Magazine has not, and never ever will, ask me to do A Life in the Day.

Anyway, this weekend they asked London-based "hipster model" Ricki Hall to do it, which makes sense, because he once dated Kelly Osbourne. Yeah, what have you ever done? This guy has 365,000 Instagram followers and he once pashed Ozzy Osbourne's daughter. Your life looks shit now, doesn't it? Ricki Hall is already inherently better than you, in every feasible way.

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Thing is… thing is people didn't especially like Ricki Hall, post-interview. They did not react well to him, generally:

I mean, here is a thing he said, about himself, in a national newspaper: "I can lose followers on Instagram over anything—once I lost 1,500 of them after painting my nails black." Also: "I … spray on Lynx Africa." And here's the one that really got people on Twitter mad: "I use this time to think about my day, maybe my next fashion statement. I take style tips from everything, even kids and homeless people."

Close your eyes. Imagine a man with black painted nails who smells—by choice—of Lynx Africa, eyeing up children and homeless people to see how fire their look is. What did you just imagine? The leader of a local pickup artist collective who is on his last warning from the police? Wrong: what you were actually thinking about was Ricki Hall, hipster model and former beau of Kelly Osbourne.

Listen: I'm not here to tell you Ricki Hall is the worst man in the world. I'm not here to say, "Ricki Hall seems like the type of dude who complains about man buns because 'he did that years ago, and now everyone is doing it.'" No. That is not my place. Other words I am not here to say: "Ricki Hall legitimately enjoys rooftop bars"; "Ricki Hall keeps saying he is 'bored of pulled pork' but actually, secretly, extremely likes pulled pork still"; "Walking anywhere with Ricki Hall takes three times as long because he keeps stopping to ask you to take photos of him posing by graffiti." These things are not for me to say. You can judge him for yourself. Make your own mind up.

But what I am saying is: Doesn't… doesn't it sort of sound like Ricki Hall is playing the role of a hipster, here? Like he has googled, "what do hipsters do + say" before the interview and got it down rote.

"I'm called 'a hipster,' which I hate"—Ricki Hall, 2015.

"When I'm in London, I like to explore or go on missions to find something specific, like a shirt."—Ricki Hall, 2015.

"London is a fake and dark place"—Ricki Hall, 2015

"My tattoos include Super Mario and Mr. Messy"—Ricki Hall, 2015.

Ricki Hall, trawling around London, looking for a shirt. Ricki Hall, marveling that a glass of cold water is free. Does this sound like a man who has anything going on? Or does this sound like a man who is exceptionally worried about what people think of him? Is there any truth at all to the Ricki Hall: A Life in the Day interview? Or is Ricki Hall locked in his own tedious purgatory, a pair of size-8 women's jogging bottoms, looping around Brockwell Park, forever? A shapeless caricature human, a mist of Lynx Africa that got membership at Shoreditch House?

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"Haha I've been misquoted a few times in the Sunday Times interview," Hall tweeted, final closure after hours of people saying he is basically Mugatu off of Zoolander with prison tats. "It happens dude [GHOST EMOJI]." But I think he knows that's not true. I think when he drinks his glass of tap water and applies his teenager deodorant this morning, he knows he was quoted exactly perfectly.

But for all those fist-in-mouth-and-out-through-the-back-of-the-throat moments, this is the sentence that gets me, that breaks my horrid heart: "I drink red wine—white makes me think of ex-girlfriends, and I can end up fucking crying." Because this is as close as we get to a moment of truth from Ricki Hall. This is the only time he peels back the veneer and let's us see the raw flesh underneath. Are you really crying for lost love, Ricki Hall? Or are you crying because you are a children's coloring book papier machéd into the shape of a model, a haircut and beard combo that learned how to talk about itself, a mannequin cursed by a wizard to live a human life forevermore? Who is the real you? When you wake up and "lob a coffee pod in your Nespresso," do you know who you are? When you wipe spaghetti out of your beard with a napkin, do you have any emotions about that? Do you really think the original Mad Max is better than the new one, or are you just saying so? What do you actually think and feel? When you lie in your bed at night, waiting for the 9 AM TV alarm clock to wake you up instead of an actual alarm clock, what do you wonder about? Is it nothing? Or is the single note that sings pure and true inside your body just a quiet gust of wind?

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