Stylish Bostonians Have Nice Clothes, Lack Self-Awareness

Fashionable puppy by hmmlargeart from photos tagged “Bostonist” on flickr. Bostonist is so glad the New York Times and Co. didn’t nuke the Boston Globe back in the spring, because then we would never have had the sublime pleasure of reading the interviews with 2009’s “25 Most Stylish Bostonians” (so named because, we presume, the “25 Most Stylish Bostonians Who Have More Money and/or Cooler Jobs Than You” was too long). We were especially taken with João Ribas, whose outstandingly obnoxious quotes like, “I have an abhorrence of both consumer culture and infantilism, which is why I don’t own a pair of jeans” make him sound like a character out of a Decemberists song. He has since confirmed that, yes, he totally meant to sound like a jackass , but not in the way the entire Globe readership apparently thought. As a joke! Ah, yes, “The people that I tend to value for their contribution to the history of ideas happen to be the same people I happen to admire for their style. There’s a certain seriousness and formality and propriety that goes along with the ideas and ostensibly the style.” This is totally hilarious now that we get it! But in the future, Ribas might want to take into account

the fact that, if no one knows you’re joking, it’s not funny. Happily, the list isn’t all pretension and po-mo attempts at humor. There are some interesting tidbits to be found, although none of them really have to do with fashion. We learn that Patriots defensive lineman Jarvis Green is a wine aficionado; whimsical hat designer Marie Galvin considers herself a “recovering goth”; and Stacey Gabriel, co-director of genome sequencing and analysis at the Broad Institute, is “a huge follower of Us magazine and InStyle .” And we’re pleased that the Globe featured Bostonist favorites Maureen Hautaniemi of The Savant Project, and Martine Severin of blog-we-love Beyond Boston Chic . But those highlights can’t save a piece featuring quotes like, “I wanted to wear sneakers [to the White House] but my wife made me change into shoes,” from Karmaloop owner Greg Selkoe; and, “I don’t care what people think. I’ll go to a dive bar with a white rabbit fur shawl on,” from Intel computer architect Lisa Wu. Bostonist feels sort of bad for anyone that desperate to appear hip. But only sort of, since they still have more money and cooler jobs than us, after all.

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Stylish Bostonians Have Nice Clothes, Lack Self-Awareness