WHO WERE THE 1980’S YUPPIES?

Yuppie is a slang term denoting the market segment of young urban professionals. A yuppie is often characterized by youth, affluence, and business success. They are often preppy in appearance and like to show off their success by their style and possessions.

Coined in the 1980s, the term yuppie was used as a derogatory title for young business people who were considered arrogant, undeservedly wealthy, and obnoxious. Yuppies were often associated with wearing high fashion clothing, driving BMWs, and gloating about their successes. The term has become less of a stereotype and now promotes the image of an affluent professional.

Yuppies tend to be educated with high-paying jobs, and they live in or near large cities. Some typical industries associated with yuppies include finance, tech, academia, and many areas in the arts, especially those associated with liberal thinking and style.

Arguably, the first printed instance of yuppie was in a May 1980 issue of Chicagomagazine entitled “From Yippie to Yuppie.” Yippies, in stark contrast to yuppies, were affiliates of the Youth International Party, a counterculture group that emerged in the late 1960s. The term continued to grow throughout the 1980s as it was used in more newspaper and magazine articles.

The Yuppies were materialistic and what they wore, ate and read were all very important to how they portrayed themselves and their lifestyle. For the brands that were worn during the Yuppie era and the growing use of credit cards this gave them more presence. For the wannabee Yuppies, climbing the corporate ladder it was important to wear the right brands and show everyone who they were. The Yuppie culture bought more people to these luxury brands, bringing them into a new demographic, which had a lot of money they wanted to spend.

Yuppies ostentatiously stocked their New York-style apartments with the most expensive designer appliances and the latest in high-end stereo and video gear, and drove to work in shiny new Benzes and Beemers. Their clothing was designer clothing, their furniture was designer furniture . . . even their coffee was designer coffee!

Nearly 75% of yuppie households were childless couples (Yuppies often worked so hard that they had little time for sex and more than one couple admitted that they had an answering machine at home just so they could talk to each other at least once a day!).

But the yuppie heyday was to be short-lived — critics gleefully described the stock market crash of October 1987 as the consequence of yuppie folly and the beginning of the yuppie’s end.