DON’T GET HER STARTED... ON HYGGE HYPE
We’ve reached peak hygge. 26,237 books on the Danish idea that the best way to survive winter is to go into a state of quasi-hibernation – not leaving your flflflat for days, swaddling yourself in formless loungewear, eating your way through the contents of your fridge rather than bothering with a déclassé, non-hygge foray to the shops, doing everything by soothing, non-eye-hurty candlelight, only interacting with the humans trapped in your hygge-themed hell-house alongside you, and being incredibly smug about it all, because hygge is Scandi, ergo chic – have been published in the days since the clocks went back, with a further 30,002 expected before the end of next week. Every second git you follow on the social networks has made some sort of reference to how hygge their lives are right now, and while I’m exaggerating for effect, I don’t think I can overstate how much hygge annoys me. Actually, it’s worse than that. I find hygge sinister. Claustrophobic, stagnant, potentially incredibly smelly – no one’s ever successfully translated ‘hygge’ into English, but I’m wondering if ‘fart-filled flat’ might come close – and the sworn enemy of glamour.
The pro-hygge faction will tell you it’s fabulous. The pro-hygge faction will talk about the ‘serenity’ and ‘intimacy’ of ‘cosiness’, and they’ll use expressions like ‘hunker down’ and ‘kutchy’ a lot, because that’s the kind of people they are. But do not heed them! Hygge is the lifestyle equivalent of that thing Karl Lagerfeld once said about sweatpants being a sign of defeat. Hygge is giving up, going home early – and never coming out again.
For all these reasons, hygge is not OK; for all these reasons, I am launching myself as an anti-hygge vigilante. I will fight hygge with fashion. I will fight it with velvet as daywear, with midriff in the midwinter; I will fight it with tightness, with visible bra strap, with lurex thread and patent leather and a year-round pedicure. I will fight hygge with bronzer and week-night cocktails, with a permanent sense of occasion, by maintaining my stringent standards on depilation (with particular reference to my eyebrows). I will fight hygge by going outside, and by not speaking to the man I keep in my flat more than is absolutely necessary. I will fight hygge. And I will win.