My 16 year old niece was using this word to describe herself over Christmas, evidently a new coinage akin to "hipster". There is a definite design, of course, to what these young scenesters are into these days, but the closest my niece could come to defining the "scene" for me was a sort of retro-mod.

Has anyone else encountered this usage in the high school (secondary school) or college set on any side(s) of the pond(s)?

a new one to me, dude...

Nope, but then I don't ask. I will.

What is retro-mod?

My 19-year-old collegian never heard of it; no use asking my 18-yr.-old.
When I first saw the word, I thought SEN-es-ter; took me about the third look to realize it must be scene-ster.

retro-mod
a return to the mod days of the 60's. as Austin Powers says, "yeah, baby"...

Quite right, slick...uh, I mean, eta. Yeah, evidently the Carnaby Street fashion look is a big part (but only a part) of making the scene as a scenester, according to my niece. I mentioned Twiggy to her and she said, yeah, they've already looked up her styles on the web.

Mebbe I should get her the Who's "Quadrophenia" VHS/DVD so she'd know what the original Mods were really all about.

Here's another clue. My brother-in-law said she picked scenester up from her web-friends in California (why am I not surprised? ). Mebbe if caradea was around she could shed some light on the coinage.