Christmas has long posed a unique dilemma for hip and fashionable people – it's irretrievably daggy.

The tinsel is tacky, the plastic baubles gaudy. The predominant red and green colour palate is an aesthetic nightmare.

There have been valiant efforts to render Christmas tasteful. This year, fashion label Bassike has produced a stylish taupe ceramic bauble at $20 a pop.

And interior design magazines regularly feature alternative "trees" of silver birch decorated with white origami doves.

But somehow, it's just not Christmas, is it?

It seems the hipsters finally agree. Because there are signs that cool people are giving up on making Christmas cool and are embracing the inherent daggyness in the whole tinsel-bound package - albeit in a post-modern, ironic way.

A large part of this has been the phenomenon of the "ugly Christmas sweater", which has as its original poster boy Colin Firth wearing a knitted reindeer jumper in the opening scene of Bridget Jones' Diary.

No one knows how the trend emerged, but there are now a range of dedicated websites selling all manner of hideous examples, with an national "ugly Christmas sweater" day declared on December 12.

This year, fashionable e-commerce website Etsy has a whole category of eye-poppingly awful kit. Think waistcoats embroidered with holly and candy canes, and jumpers with snowflakes and coloured lights. Likewise, e-tailer ASOS has a gallery of bearded hipster dudes with tattoos modeling Frosty the Snowman and elf jumpers with attitude.

The trend has spread to Australia, with Glen Beal selling a t-shirt version of the ugly sweater that is more suitable for the southern hemisphere.

His best customers are expats from the US and UK who are nostalgic for a white Christmas. "It brings back memories of when nana used to knit them a scratchy Christmas jumper," he said.

Parties have also sprung up to celebrate the phenomenon, with The Friend in Hand pub in Glebe holding an Ugly Christmas Jumper bash last month.

Continuing the theme, Target last year ran a social media campaign where people posted "awkward" family Christmas photos, wearing felt antlers in front of fake fireplaces and the obligatory ugly Christmas jumper.

This year, Melbourne Central shopping centre has started an Awkward Photo Booth fusing Christmas kitsch with 80s bad taste, that is proving a hit with shoppers. Hipsters seem to have got into the spirit of it all, posing with bulging eyes, grimaces and creepy hand placements.

Photographer Karin Locke from Awkward Portraits, provides cheesy clothes and props such as daggy cardigans and scrunchies, that have the hipsters squealing in delight.

"There's a vest with baubles and cats that people go nuts for. They want to buy it," she said, adding many Sydney visitors had passed through the booth.

Locke's theory is that Christmas gives even the coolest cats licence to be daggy.

"In an age where everything is image-crafted, looking bad for a day can be very liberating," she said.

Fashion commentator Paula Joye said the daggy Christmas trend was part of the trend for retro fashion, as well as "random" humour, clothing and art.

"Ugly Christmas jumpers and photos are 'random', and therefore cool," she said.

But tacky Christmas fashion also appealed to the inner child in all of us, Joye said, whether it be light-up Santa earrings, ties that play Jingle Bells, Hawaiian shirts featuring a surfing Santa or snowflake legwarmers.

"People really love Christmas," she said.

"It's the one day where there should be no fashion rules and you can embrace your inner Christmas nerd."

Now all that's needed is for Mariah Carey's Christmas album to make a comeback in the charts.

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