Everyone knows what cool means. Cool is an aesthetic, an attitude, an amorphous but defining quality that is often difficult to explain, but easily recognizable. The Internet is full of cool places like The Cool Site of the Day and Daily Candy and other search engines that aggregate cool. Cool can also be found on the library shelf and any up and coming Hipster can turn to the pages of the book Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury and explore the beginnings of Fifties modernist influences on the West Coast.
Besides being an aesthetic and an artifact of culture–individuals and music can also embody cool. Nothing is cooler than Jazz and nobody is cooler than Miles Davis. Davis’ legendary album Birth Of The Cool was released by Capitol Records in 1957 with music from 3 recording sessions and the album is timeless cool and even inspired a whole school of jazz musicians in California known as the “cool school.”
Objects, film, and fashion are also cool. Take Ray Ban Wayfarers, Messenger bags, and Cloverfield. But material cool can translate into consumerism based on a desire to enhance prestige and status by owning certain “cool” possessions. However, this kind of cool is a diminishing equation–affluent affectations are never cool.
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