What Hath David Brooks Wrought?

Sunday Styles sociologizing Mary-Kate Olsen’s thrift-store motherlode:

As fall turned to winter and edged toward spring, Ms. Olsen, 18, pushed her version of ashcan chic to emphatic extremes, an evolution charted by glossy magazines that snoop on stars in everyday activities. The look became dottier and dottier, until it morphed into a kind of homeless masquerade, one that was accented by subtle luxuries like a cashmere muffler, a Balenciaga lariat bag and of course her signature carryout latte from Starbucks.

Ms. Olsen is a fashion pauvre, and so is her equally funky twin, Ashley (the other self-made millionaire N.Y.U. freshman). Their style would seem to mark them as front-runners for Earl Blackwell’s worst-dressed list. In fact the twins are trendsetters for the latest hipster look. They are influencing the same generation of girls and young women who fell for them as wholesome child stars, buying their Mattel dolls, and who later, as tweens, spent $750 million a year on denims and pastel tops from the mary-kateandashley line at Wal-Mart.

“The Olsens are the real thing,” fashion role models for a generation entering adulthood, said Karen Berenson, a stylist who works in New York and Los Angeles. She is unfazed by Mary-Kate Olsen’s widely publicized admission last year to a clinic to treat an eating disorder and her continuing recovery. “She makes skinny girls in baggy clothes look cool,” Ms. Berenson said.

Teenagers and young women have long taken style cues from celebrities, of course. But the sway of the Olsens is especially surprising because it is a radical swing from influences of recent years, like the flamboyantly sexy, skin-baring style of Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson, as well as the heiress look popularized by Paris Hilton.

Just months ago, “stylish young women used to wear Gucci or Prada head to toe,” Ms. Berenson said. Today they are more apt to be seen at supermarkets or parties toting a beat-up Chloé bag, their eyes shaded by enormous, high-priced Laura Biaggiotti sunglasses, the faint suggestion of opulence hidden beneath chadorlike layers of cashmere and ankle-length peasant skirts.

David Wolfe, the creative director of the Doneger Group, which forecasts fashion trends, was in Las Vegas last month at a fashion trade show. “The trendiest, coolest people were wearing things like a chiffon skirt with fur boots,” he said. “It looked like they had gotten dressed in the dark.”

The new look has acquired a name: Bobo style. “You know, bohemian bourgeois,” explained Kathryn Neal, 28, a freelance writer in New York, who is partial to billowing Alexander McQueen pirate shirts worn with beat-up jeans.

Quick quiz: The most obnoxious clause is A) “the faint suggestion of opulence hidden beneath chadorlike layers of cashmere and ankle-length peasant skirts,” B) “She [who is being treated for an eating disorder] makes skinny girls in baggy clothes look cool,” or C) “. . . who is partial to billowing Alexander McQueen pirate shirts worn with beat-up jeans”?

Tough call. I say D) All of the Above. And that’s just in the opening paragraphs!

Question Two: The statement most lacking in self-awareness is A) “These days you just feel stupid and shallow walking around with a $1,000 bag”; B) “On a social level Bobo is very New York City. It’s a way of showing that you have no boundaries, that whether you’re at a party on Park Avenue or in an East Village bar, you can jump into anything, cross over into any kind of group and be accepted”; or C) “It’s perfectly fine to look like a bag lady”?

Close, but B) wins out for most grotesque example of lacking self-awareness. For kicks, substitute “East New York” for “East Village bar.” There. I hope to God this person was misquoted.