Forget Jet Set. Think Gypset.

Julia Chaplin is a New York City-based journalist whose book Gypset Style was published in May 2009 by Assouline.

Gypset Rule #1: If a stranger invites you to stay at his or her house and it's close to an amazing surf break, always accept.

That's roughly how I ended up sleeping on a twin bed with superhero sheets in Punta Hermosa, a beach town about an hour drive south down the Pan American Highway from Lima, Peru. My hosts were Ines and Herbert Mulanovich, the hippie parents of world champ surfer Sofía. "Stay as long as you'd like," they had suggested to me through a friend of a friend. It was a fantastic week: I had a Blue Crush moment surfing next to Sofía in heavy, peeling waves on a borrowed shortboard; I ate Nobu-worthy ceviche marinated in hot peppers and passion fruit from a local café; and at night I party-hopped in flip-flops through dirt streets with a 17-year-old art student named Roxy.

Traveling is a lot more fun with the gypset philosophy. I'm not just saying that because I made it up. A near science, gypset fuses the resourcefulness and restlessness of a gypsy with the sophistication and speed of the jet set. The result is a blueprint for freelance creatives; urbanites who think five-star resorts are annoying and would rather skip St. Barts at New Year's. Of course, it also helps if you're French or like to surf. But those are certainly not prerequisites.

The gypset map looks a lot different than your official atlas; instead of New York, London, or Moscow, its capitals include Filicudi, Montauk, and Trancoso. Over the past few years while traveling the world as a travel writer, I noticed a pattern. Whenever I happened upon an idyllic bohemian enclave, it seemed like some gypsetter had already arrived there years earlier. I went to the Spanish isle of Ibiza and in the pine-covered north found ex-London fashion-ophiles camped out in old white-washed fincas and tepees. In Careyes, a small town on the Pacific coast of Mexico, I made instant new best friends with eccentric internationals without ever learning their last names. And in the summers I headed to Montauk and found a creative community hiding out at the end of gravel driveways. All these places shared the gypset aesthetic: they were hard to reach and had that elusive high-low mix of people and culture.

Photo credits clockwise from left: Julia Chaplin portrait by Jason Miller; © Anne Menke; Courtesy Carolyn Roumeguere; © Simon Upton/The Interior Archive.

I decided to chronicle this emerging and alluring movement in a book, Gypset Style. I researched the legacy of countercultural wanderers from 19th-Century British Romantic poet Lord Byron, Victorian adventuress Jane Digby, on up to Hemingway, the Surrealists in Mexico, the Beats in Tangier and the backpacking hippies whom gypsetters most resemble (minus the backpacks, that is). But the main difference between gypsetters and the bohemians who preceded them is commerce. Gypsetters are not interested in dropping out in an Indian ashram or a southwestern commune. They want to contribute to society, but they want to do it on their own terms. Which is why most gypsetters tend to be artists, musicians, designers, surfers and bon vivants.

Gypset started as a reaction to the conspicuous consumption of the jet set—a group who seemed cutting edge when they emerged in the 1960s but by the 2000s had become completely commodifed and boring (aka the St. Tropez syndrome). So with the recent economic crash, corporations laying off full-time employees and the rise of a freelance workforce connected by Internet and cell phones, the whole gypset lifestyle seemed even more relevant. Why not sublet your apartment in New York City for a month and use the proceeds to live in a hut in Alto Paraíso, Brazil? No one will know where you're emailing from. A gypsetter doesn't take vacations, they barter residencies, crashing with friends or swapping apartments. If a gypsetter does check into a hotel, it is one like the Peponi on Lamu Island in Kenya, which is short on creature comforts but has been there since the '60s with the island's only bar and barefoot waiters in sarongs who serve rum-spiked "Old Pals."

After my book came out last spring, I realized I had gone from being a semi-detached interloper into a full-fledged gypsetter. Instead of moving on to the next project, I started a website www.gypset.com and vowed to forge deeper into the lifestyle. From my apartment in the West Village, I poured over my standing globe, maps and contacts and set a course for adventure.

Some trips I may take this winter are to Tahiti, Ghana, a road trip from Amman to Petra in Jordan and of course to Brazil. My alt.gypset map is filling up and soon I won't have any need for the real one.

MORE GYPSET RULES FOR THE ROAD

• HANG OUT ONLY IN PLACES THAT ARE HARD TO REACH, PREFERABLY MORE THAN THREE HOURS FROM A MAJOR AIRPORT AND DOWN DIRT ROADS.

• MANSIONS OR VILLAS ARE OKAY IF THEY BELONG TO SOMEONE ELSE OR ARE SERIOUSLY RUN DOWN.

• NEVER WEAR CLOTHES WITH VISIBLE LOGOS.

• MONTAUK, NOT EAST HAMPTON; IBIZA, NOT CAPRI; VENICE BEACH, NOT SANTA MONICA

• DON'T MIND FALLING ASLEEP WITH SALTY HAIR.

• DRINK AGUARDIENTE, NOT CRISTAL.

• DON'T ASK LAST NAMES.

• KNOW HOW TO SURF/SNOWBOARD; IF YOU PLAY GOLF, IT'S ON A NATURAL GREEN IN SCOTLAND, NOT A DESERT RESORT IN MEXICO.

Photo credits clockwise from left: Dan Busta courtesy Mulanovich family; © Anne Menke; Liz GIlbert; © Anne Menke.

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