While standing in line to get a bagel at 8:15 A.M., bright and early in the heart of one of the trendiest transplant neighborhoods in New York City, I realized I was severely underdressed. In line behind me was a girl ten times cooler than I am, wearing crochet leg-warmers, a metallic designer headband and a pair of pink satin Tabi ballet flats. The usual outfit I wore to scurry downstairs to get breakfast — a collegiate t-shirt and faded grey sweatpants with a weird stain on the butt-pocket that wouldn’t come out no matter how hard I tried— wouldn’t cut it anymore.
Decried on the internet, long gone are the days of fast-casual dining. Since the turn of the pandemic, restaurants, and, in turn, what you wear to them, have arisen as a newfound status symbol for anyone who’s online. It’s not uncommon to find models-off-duty in head-to-toe Diesel munching on calamari at Fanelli Cafe in SoHo or TikTok micro-celebrities in matching clean-core-aesthetic-cool-girl-soft-life uniforms of choice romping around the West Village in search for their new summer watering hole. The common thread? An emphasis on an unspoken ‘if you know you know’ uniform
All across Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and countless other fashion-adjacent cities, trendy restaurants have transcended their reputation as simply another place to grab overpriced dinner and drinks in dim-lighting. They’re a place to be seen. After an essay by Elle.com editor at large Faran Krentcil went viral amongst the small-but-mighty New York fashion scene, it just propelled the phenomenon to even greater heights.
While, sure, you can make the argument it’s always been like this (who can forget the early-aughts days of celebrities being paid to host their birthdays at Tao or Sugar Factory?), the normal, non-Kardashian crowd wasn’t able to slip past the server’s stand into the arms of fashion elite quite as easily as it were today. With the touch of a button and an alarm set for 12 P.M. on a random Monday afternoon, you too could be whisked away into stardom by simply lounging around a restaurant in an outfit that costs nearly twice-as-much as the total bill.
Marie Claire’s style editor Emma Childs practically makes watching strangers pull up in their Uber Blacks a game. “My roommate and I have the honor (and occasionally, curse) of living across from a very esteemed, sceney restaurant. It counts A-listers as regulars and is notorious for being one of NYC’s most difficult reservations to get your hands on. When we need a serotonin boost, she and I look out our window, craning our necks five stories below, and watch the decked-out patrons pull up. It’s a sort of anthropological ritual to live vicariously through those who have more Resy willpower than we ever will,” she explains.
Despite the restaurant who shall not be named’s three-dollar sign status on Google, there’s no formal way to approach the dress code, Childs says. “It’s always a range of outfits: we’ve seen Louis Vuitton logomania, Supreme streetwear, and once a silk gown that, tragically, got dragged through a puddle of what was definitely urine. But there is a very obvious common thread: everyone dresses to be perceived. When you dine there, you show up to see and be seen (including by me, looking on from my pre-war walkup).”
Perhaps it’s the act of being perceived—whether online or IRL— that makes us all feel the inherent need to play a game of dress-up all the time. It doesn’t matter if my friends and I are going to some tiny mom-and-pop restaurant that’s gained traction on TikTok as of late, there’s always an ingrained pressure to wear your best because, frankly, anyone could be watching.
Diners aren’t the only ones feeling the change. Restaurant owner and Strange Bird Hospitality founder Natalie Freihon tells Who What Wear there’s been a noticeable uptick in well-dressed patrons since the end of major lockdown restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Freihon, who’s colorful spaces filled with eyelash murals and ’80s themed Mephis-style decor create larger than life spaces the fashion crowd loves, explains that her restaurants are meant to be safe spaces for self-expression—especially for teenagers and adults coming-to-age in New York and experimenting with their style.
“For young people especially, dining out is your activity and it’s what you’re doing every day. If that’s your plan and that’s your social life, you should embrace it in any way you possibly can and embrace it in any way,” she explains. “If you decide that Friday night is going to be ’80s night with your friends and you all get dressed up, nobody looks at you like your’e crazy. Nobody is going to judge the way that you want to experience that. It’s one of the most special things about dining out—it creates this opportunity for us to celebrate things that are mundane.”
Naturally, every restaurant comes with its own vibe. For Freihon and her properties, patron’s style changes based on time of week (Thursday, she notes, are usually first-date nights, complete with trend-forward little black dresses and uncomfortably chic heels). For the dive bars and tiny restaurants in the rebranded Dimes Square area, you’re more than likely to find New York’s cool club kids walking around in Raf Simons garments and soccer jerseys. Or, on the Upper East Side, where the fashion scene prefers linens, black belts, and quiet luxury-style bags to mark` their territory as people with taste.
It’s no longer a flex to go out to eat at a three-star Michelin restaurant in a hoodie and jeans anymore—the biggest flex, it seems, is snagging a Resy reservation at an obscure cool kid-scene establishment and walk in wearing vintage Raf Simons. In this editor’s thoughts, there’s only one thing to do: let fast casual burn and grab your nearest off-the-runway dress sample and head on over to your nearest corner store to get some mozzarella sticks. Trust me, you’ll feel really good about it later.
