I first heard of people, trends or, cars being described as "cool" when I landed in America at age 8. The word was very often used then and now it has spread everywhere, although it is not as often used. There was also "groovy", which I thought was superior even to being "cool", but that seems to have gotten left in the Sixties.
There is no exact definition of what "cool" means, and it certainly changes over time. In the Sixties, bright colors were cool especially in clothes. Bright bell-bottom pants and tie-dyed t-shirts were popular. The Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Mustang were cool cars. Pollution and the Vietnam War were not cool, but wearing a peace sign and protesting against the war was. Leftward politics was cooler than rightward. Many people thought that LSD was the cool drug, at least until their friends began dying because of it. The "establishment" generally wasn't cool but being anti-establishment often was.
Nothing was more cool than going to the music festival at Woodstock, in 1969. We do have to admire their philosophy of peace. About 400,000 young people got together for three days, and there was not a single reported act of violence.
Surreal psychedelic art was cool, and there was psychedelic rock music to go with it. The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Psychedelic Art".
The Bible does not tell us to "fit in", or to follow the crowd, or to be "with it". It tells us to "Come out from among them and be separate", Second Book of Corinthians 6:17. Going with the crowd is generally the way to Hell, not to Heaven.
Although it wasn't a major part of the Sixties, there was a "Jesus Movement" within it. Some Hippies saw Jesus as having been pretty cool. A lot of people had given up their uncool lives and followed Him. He told the establishment and the religious authorities how corrupt they were and how meaningless their empty rituals were. He got himself crucified basically because they resented His popularity. There was actually a Christian version of Woodstock, Explo 72 in Dallas.
Where did being "cool" get started? What happened in the Sixties was that the older generation had been the generation of world wars, genocide, terrible new weapons and, an economic collapse. The end of the Second World War had brought the Baby Boom, and the youth culture that the Sixties was about. But being "cool" is nothing new, even if the word itself wasn't used.
I have concluded that being cool actually began with religion, specifically cathedrals. Brightness and brilliant light is part of being cool and the original cathedrals and churches are of what is now known as the Romanesque style. The stone walls had to be thick, and window space very limited, so that the walls could support the weight of the roof.
The idea arose of supporting the weight of the roof in other ways so that the walls could have a lot of window space. This idea led to the Gothic style and made possible elaborate stained glass windows. In the following image of Reims Cathedral, from Google Earth, you can see the buttresses outside the cathedral that support most of the weight of the roof.
This makes possible the stained glass windows associated with Gothic cathedrals. The following image is from Google Street View.
In the following image of Mont St. Michel, from Google Earth, you can see both styles. On the left and in the foreground is the Romanesque style, with thick walls and very limited window space. On the upper right is the Gothic style, where large stained glass windows are possible because the buttresses support most of the weight of the roof.
That set the historical precedent for being cool, the modern version of which actually began with the Reformation. First, the Reformation had the anti-establishment and counterculture element of being cool going for it. The new Protestant philosophy was to break away from this corrupt, greedy and overarching establishment so that you can be free.
But I believe that it was the Catholic Church that really began the modern version of cool, even if it was long before the word was used. After the Protestants had broken away in the Reformation, the Catholics launched the Counter-Reformation.
The Counter-Reformation included the Catholic Church's own version of cool. It was the new Baroque style. Northern Europe, which had broken away in the Reformation, had the old Gothic cathedrals. Medieval Europeans built magnificent Gothic cathedrals but the knowledge of how to build large domes had been lost. It was rediscovered during the Renaissance and large domes became the central feature of Baroque cathedrals.
Even if the word wasn't used yet, Baroque was the beginning of the modern version of cool. St. Peter's Basilica, in Rome, was built in the Baroque style. Image from Google Earth.
The Protestants soon copied the Baroque style and built new cathedrals that were characterized by great domes, such as St. Paul's in London in this image from Google Earth.
St. Petersburg, in Russia, was especially built as the capital of the Romanov Dynasty and is known for it's Baroque cathedrals, having been built after the end of the Gothic era. Images from Google Street View.
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