Dissecting the "West Village Girl" Uniform

With writer Brock Colyar.

This week, New York magazine published a cover story titled, “It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl.” Written by Brock Colyar, it identifies the memeable stereotype of the Pilates-loving, Cartier Love bracelet-wearing, TikTok-famous young woman who can reliably be found sipping spritzes in Manhattan with a group of friends dressed just like her. She’s 23, “basic,” and proud of it. (Why shouldn’t she be? She’s living her best life.) You’ve probably seen her around.

Like any good New York magazine cover story, it got people talking. I’m not nearly young enough or masochistic enough to engage with the online discourse. (“The old people? They die. Now it’s young people with the social media. After corona, pew! The internet!”) But I found the story both well-intentioned and engaging, specifically because it helped me better understand a sartorial phenomenon that has puzzled me for years: why is everyone wearing the same thing??

My friends tell me that we all dressed the same when we were younger, too. This is true, but our level of coordination was never this uncanny. Walking around, I sometimes feel like I’m being Punk’d. Brock’s article made me feel a little less crazy, but I still had some questions, so I called them this week to discuss the West Village Girl uniform in greater depth. Do these girls plan their outfits before leaving the house? Was there a unanimous vote I missed? Does anyone care?? No judgement; I’m genuinely curious. I also wanted to know more about shopping on Bleecker Street.

Below is an edited version of our conversation.

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Emilia: Based on your reporting, how would you describe the “West Village Girl” uniform? Obviously, it isn't exclusive to the West Village, but you see it a lot there.

Brock: To me, it’s a white top, light-washed baggy jeans, white sneakers, and, as I mentioned in the story, one of those Aritzia Super Puffs, or a light camel coat. (It was still kind of cold outside when I was working on this story.) Plus, presumably cheap, buggy, black plastic sunglasses and chunky gold jewelry, which they wear everywhere, even when they're coming back from the gym. Always gold; never silver. Hair is pulled back. The other uniform is just a matching Pilates set in candy, pastel colors, or a Skims nude.

I took an Instagram video back in 2021 of a pack of girls walking by Fanelli’s in that exact look—the one that’s the lede image, with low-slung jeans and cropped white tops. So, it's not a new thing. But I’ve always been curious about the logistics. Did you get the sense that there’s any coordination happening? Are these girls texting their group chats? Or is it an unspoken thing?

I didn't get any sense that there was coordination. Even though the people I spoke to admitted that there was a similarity to all the girls in the neighborhood, it was never acknowledged within the groups.

Why are they gravitating towards what they're gravitating towards then?

A lot of it is pretty affordable. I feel these girls have a taste for luxury, but they’re going out to eat, getting caviar and martinis, and maybe joining a private member’s club. In terms of clothes, they don't seem to be that snobby. Even the things that glam it up are kind of accessible, like the charm bracelets.

Except Cartier. “You can have a Cartier Love bracelet and still care about immigrant rights,” was an excellent quote.

I just don't see them caring that much about capital-F fashion. I'm thinking about the quintessential influencer—they're not posting their reviews of Met Gala outfits, or posting about a big designer move. They’re not interested.

They're spending their free time snagging Via Carota reservations, instead. Are they shopping vintage?

No, which I do think is one of the biggest differences between them and the previous generation of West Village Girls, who didn’t have any money and were digging through vintage bins. These girls don’t seem to do that.

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Your reporting on the West Village retail scene blew my mind, specifically the start-up Leap, which leased 11 stores in a four-block stretch on Bleecker at the time of publication. They’re basically manufacturing a shopping area. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you saw in stores? Sounds like they’re packed.

Yeah, the stores are packed. There are the West Village Girls who live there, and then there are the girls who spend a bunch of time there, or are maybe tourists. The shopping scene was slightly more tourists trying to emulate the look. But the Leap stuff is crazy. Once you find out they're controlling all of those stores—and not just on Bleecker but also in Nolita, Abbot Kinney in Los Angeles, and Armitage in Chicago, it all starts to make sense. They purposely source for young women, and most stores are e-commerce brands.

Is there an aesthetic throughline and/or price point between the Leap stores?

They want it to be somewhat accessible. Bleecker went through so many booms and busts because it was a stretch of luxury stores, and they were practically showrooms; no one was actually shopping. I mean, people were shopping at Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs. But by the time Prabal Gurung opened a store there [in 2018], and apparently paid a ton of money for it, it was a showroom. Part of Leap’s idea is to bring in more accessible stores at a LoveShackFancy price point so that people will actually shop, and the rents will be worth it.

In high school, I shopped at the Marc by Marc store on Bleecker, but only because I could get things like flip-flops or a tote bag for under $100. It seems to have come full circle, in a way, but instead of these luxury offshoot labels, you have Instagram brands like Frankies Bikinis. What’s the vibe at these stores? It seems very cheerful and Ref Babe-y, with signs like “PRETTY RUDE IT’S NOT 80 DEGREES OUTSIDE.”

It’s all super girly. LoveShack and several other storefronts are covered in pink flowers. In terms of the cheerful tone, Leap also staffs its stores, so all the employees greet you in the same way. You walk in and they're like, Hello, ladies. It’s always a very friendly, young woman. It’s funny.

That brings me back to the idea of sameness and cloning; these girls don’t seem to think it’s a bad thing. Why do they want to look identical to the person beside them? What do they get out of it? Call me old-fashioned, but it was once considered embarrassing to show up to a function wearing the same thing as someone else.

I was shocked. Obviously, I set out knowing that this was a feature of the story. But I didn’t think that people would voluntarily bring up that aspect of their lifestyle to me. They would say: Isn't it funny that we all look the same? And they explained it to me the same way every time, which is that, for them, it creates a sense of community.

They talk about “community” a lot, in a way that I find eye-roll-y. But there was also something sweet about it. When you’re fresh out of college and you’ve just moved to New York, there's something comforting about living in this neighborhood that feels like a little town. It's like being in private school or a sorority; you’re like, those are my sisters, or something.

This is going to date my transplant experience, but I remember when I moved to New York, which was not that long ago, in 2019, and I was living in Bushwick… This is so dumb… I can’t believe I'm saying this… But I remember getting a job at New York magazine and buying a Telfar bag, because that was it at the time. When I was working on this story, I thought about that, because it was kind of the same thing. I remember being out and about in Bushwick in 2019 and looking around, and every fucking person had that bag. I mean, it was a lot less matchy-matchy than these girls. But there was something very comforting in knowing that you saw the world the same way—there was an implication that you had the same political values or cares. It was also an excuse to talk to people and compare colors. When I thought about that time, back when I was a baby who didn't know who I was, the way these girls dress made more sense to me.

There’s always the one item you feel you need to have to fit in. For me, it was a Longchamp or LeSportsac bag in high school. In college, I bought Dansko clogs, which are so not my style. (I went to a small liberal arts school.) Now, I feel that same sense of “community,” I guess, with snap cardigan-wearers. But, like you said, these girls match from head to toe. It seems likely that there’s a sorority element that’s just foreign to me. Maybe it’s much more normal than my Dansko-ass realizes. That quote from publicist Savannah Engel, who talks about everyone passing out in her apartment in black because that was the PR girl's uniform at the time, also proves that there’s always been some iteration of girls dressing the same. When it’s New Yorkers wearing black, it's cool. But when it's a bunch of girls in Levi's and crop tops, we’re like, it’s a TikTok cult!

Like the PR girls, this is also an extension of their jobs, to some extent, right? They're making money off the clothes they're wearing. The ones who are influencers, at least, are posting links to what they’re wearing, and that's why it also multiplies in a crazier way, because you can literally click and buy.

Yeah, those are two really good points. I do think it's easier to copy-and-paste outfits than it was before. Even if I wanted to dress exactly like my post-grad clique, I’m not sure I would have been able to do it so easily. The girls weren’t dropping affiliate links back then.

And it probably wasn’t available like it is now with mass production. These girls don't seem to be that concerned with fast fashion or sustainability.

They don’t seem that concerned with individuality, either. Sameness is just a part of modern life; you can’t accuse someone of copying if you don’t even know who started it. We all have the same phones, go on the same vacations, and take the same picture of an octopus suspended on a clothesline in Greece, etc.

The uniform is an amazing way to blend in. I don't think this ended up in the story, but I asked one girl from Texas what she does when she doesn’t want to be noticed. (Everyone she knows from school—all the boys and all the girls—live in the neighborhood.) She said, Well, I just don't wear my college sweatshirt. That's how she goes incognito.

I’m glad you brought up the boys because they all also dress alike. And not just in the West Village. I did a double-take in Brooklyn a few months ago when I saw a gaggle of them.

They're all wearing Alo joggers. It's crazy. The boys are just less visible; they’re not online in the same way, so that’s a different story. And you're right that it’s happening across the whole city. Locating this story in the West Village was very helpful because it’s so recognizable there. But it feels like they’re everywhere you turn. When I was out in Greenpoint last night, I was like, Oh my God, everybody looks the same. It's all these affluent, straight, young people. I have no idea where they're coming from, but they're taking over, neighborhood by neighborhood. A charm shop just opened near me.

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