GQ Magazine places Austin as number 18 in their tally of the 40 worst-dressed cities in America. I myself declared Austin an FDD (Fashion Deficit Disorder) city after six years of living in the big fashion apple.

The second you get off the plane here you are surrounded by a sea of khaki. I often complain that my weekly Street Style Profile can be unusually difficult to do when everyone is in a tank top and flip flops. It's true that as a whole people in Texas are statistically rounder and more similarly dressed than cities of comparable size, but three years living back in Austin has left me ready to defend my city's wardrobe choices. GQ writes:

“The place looks like L.A. now,” my old UT roommate grumbled after returning from a recent weekend trip to Austin. While he could have been referring to the newly minted high-rise condos, sushi bars, or deadlock traffic, I’m pretty sure he was talking about that most pernicious of invasive species, the Hipster.

Long the domain of slackers, hippies, and blonde coeds—“The weather was too good, the dope was too cheap, and the girls were too pretty,” Steve Earle once said of the Texas capital, “and there was no f***ing way I was going to get anything done in a place like that”—Austin has emerged as a mumblecore mecca for coastal hipsters looking to get more bang from their day-job barista buck."

Kristi Kingston of the Austin American Statesman blog took this fashion criticism lying down, but I think the Austin Post should at least tell GQ what's up in Austin.

1. Austin is a car culture with few places to be seen where anyone who cares is actually looking.   In larger walking cities where sidewalks are like catwalks there are large meccas for people watching. In NYC you have Union Square and here you have Whole Foods. Sad.
2. The shopping, although it has greatly improved over that past few years with upscale local boutiques, is still lacking. Go to the Domain and find the same name brand department stores in other shopable cities but enter to find racks full of merchandise no stylish town would dare to wear. Austin seems to get more conservative, dated apparel than other stores by the same names. 
3. Do I really have to mention it is hot here for eight months of the year? Austinites know that they have to buy a bathing suit in February or the good ones will be gone and we often wear sandals through the Christmas holiday. This leaves little time for some of the more sophisticated looks like velvet smoking jackets or stylish pants.
4. The reason people live in Austin is to enjoy a high quality of life. The second thing you might notice the minute you get off the plane here is that most people are smiling. They are happy to live in a place that is still relatively affordable. There are endless activities to do and other nice people to do them with. Most of them just happen to have a casual dress code.
5. There are plenty of people here who have incredible style, but most of them are women. Isn't GQ primarily a men's magazine anyway? Unless they get to be Converse wearing tech geeks or skinny jean record store clerks, most guys in Austin have to spend five days a week in boring dot com clothes.
6. Sometimes I feel sorry for the hipsters – such an easy target. Sure they look kinda silly in their mom's jeans, granny's sweaters, sunglasses that look like compound eyes and a bike helmet but are they really hurting anyone? They are neither taking up parking spaces nor asking you for change; a fairly peaceful cult. 

If you are already obsessed with fashion and spend your days carefully selecting each outfit, then you will likely feel that GQ wasn't talking about you anyway and will still be able to sleep at night. If the judgement puts a bee in your bonnet, maybe it's time to flip through some magazines for inspiration or go people watching. But if you are simply tired of being thought of as overfed and underdressed Texans, just keep on smiling my happy fellow Austinites, because nice is never out of style.

Photo courtesy of Todd Dwyer.