“Hip” is reserved for the young, and the people who are wise enough to encounter the young and learn the new style. I am not as young as I was, but neither is anyone else. When we are shopping for clothes, we wonder what people will think of us if we were to wear what we are about to buy. Even the youngest, hippest, coolest people wonder sometimes if they are really all that. I think this is why Julie Bennett opened urbanXchange.



Take some hipsters and put them behind a table. Offer the public money or clothing for cleaning their closets and making a sacrifice upon the table behind which the hipster stands. The hipster knows what is good. It is judgment day. Divide the sheep from the goats. One pile goes behind the wall the jeans hang on and are devoured by a brown suburban once a week. It drives them to the Life Christian Thrift store. I have never been there, but we can think of this as an acceptable afterlife.



The other pile gets the mark. All of the prices end in 99. The clothes are hung in the store shortly after they are chosen, except when everyone tries to sell at the same time. On those days, clothes can wait to be hung, because the priority of the hip is to separate the cool from the not-so-cool.



The mark your old cloth receives is important. It is like the level of heaven it ascends to. Your jeans earn a mark of $9.99, for instance; from where you are standing it looks like 66.6$, and it means that you have just received $5 store credit or $3 cash. They give you 50 percent store credit because they want you to look through all of the other cool things they have chosen. They want you to know how hip they are and how good they are at the job of hippocrathy.



This concept is not new. Other stores do it in Seattle and Portland. Bennett is an innovator because she has done everything in her power to encounter the young and the new style. She listens to their music, asks them why they wear what they wear, gives them jobs, knows their dreams, asks for their stories and wants their hearts. She has created a platform, and much of Tacoma’s young culture has sprung from it.



Bennett will showcase her knowledge and talent at her Spring Fashion Preview Sunday, April 13 at Masa Restaurant. The show will run for an hour beginning at 3:30 p.m. For reservations, call 253.254.0560.



Bennett throws on her producer hat again Tuesday, April 15, when she invites Rafter to The Helm around 7 p.m.



[urbanXchange, 1934 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.572.2280]