Earliest Known Usage:

1938

Example:

"In other words, the hipster is a spectacular instance of the flight from emotion." - Herbert Gold, The Age of Happy Problems, 1962

About the Word:

The word hipster - defined by Merriam-Webster as "a person who is unusually aware of and interested in new and unconventional patterns (as in jazz or fashion)" - has been in use for considerably longer than most of our current fashions. It can be found in this sense as far back as the late 1930s, and had brief periods of use before that, referring in the early 1930s to a dancer and in the late 1920s to one who used a hip flask.