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LONDON - They may have swapped their Filofaxes and Walkmans for iPods, and drink only ethical coffee, but yuppies - those brash icons of the 1980s - are back. Last month Harper's ran a story announcing the fact under the coverline: "Return of the yuppie ... and yes, that probably means you!"
Once upon a time being called a yuppie made 30-something professionals shudder. Yuppie (Young Urban Professional) was a byword for greed, self-absorption and a lack of a social conscience.
These days, the yuppie is just as likely to be running an art gallery, a city PR firm, a television production company, or an eco-fashion store. Today's yuppies range from kitchen table entrepreneurs to City whizz kids who made their money, and then got out to launch their own charity, website or (ideally) "green" company. Many are so-called "green atoners": affluent types keen to offset guilt with green action.
Yuppies are good at business because they are always ahead of the curve with lifestyle trends. Peter York, who documented the rich in the eighties, thinks the yuppie has had an unfair press. He reminds me that the term then meant a young city-dweller with a well-paid, professional job and an affluent lifestyle. "The yuppie got confused with the Loadsamoney caricature," he says. "The true yuppie was well educated, smart, young and very ambitious. Often they married each other, so, say, the husband would be in a clever bit of the City, but she might be the registrar of a big hospital who started her own medical supplies business alongside her day job."
Obsession with career was a yuppie hallmark. As The Yuppie Handbook (1984) pointed out, work had to be personally meaningful, emotionally satisfying, and a vehicle for self-expression. Yuppie couples worked long hours, put off having children and had lots of disposable income.
Officially, the yuppie died on October 19, 1987, the day the stock market crashed and the Dow Jones lost 22.5 per cent, ushering in a new indie/slacker generation. But as a recent article in the American glossy magazine Details pointed out, your average upwardly-mobile young professional has far outstripped and outclassed the mid-eighties yuppie.
In boom-town London we again have high-flyers making millions. House price inflation has been in double digits for years, champagne sales exceed 300 million bottles a year, and high-end restaurants such as The Wolseley thrive. Goldman Sachs staff ("the haves and have yachts") won a record bonus last year, up 40 per cent on 2005.
Yuppies didn't disappear, they just adapted. "Money didn't go away," says York, "it just got bigger and quieter". And according to Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, the author of Luxury Fever: "People never lost their taste for quality things."
The crucial difference is that today's yuppies make a great display of being green. They invest in ethical clothing and cars, go to farmers' markets and have wind turbines on their houses. But of course they still run the London social set. They still live at the right address and draw the right income.
The yuppie is still addicted to consumption: but the labels have changed. Instead of chucking money at Porsches and Rolexes, new yuppies prefer "experiential" pursuits such as travel, talks and art events. They dress differently. "Indie yuppies" resemble students or aspiring artists in vintage T-shirts and recycled Terra Plana trainers.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the modern yuppie is that many of us will recognise ourselves.
The Yuppie Handbook listed the things that budding yuppies couldn't live without: gourmet coffee, Burberry trench coat, expensive running shoes, home help, new kitchen with double sink ...
Just remember that when you're ordering your organic vegetables.
- INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
