what is the most underrated fashion city?
findings from 300 replies.
What makes a city a fashion city?
This question has been plaguing me as of late, as I ruminate on why we love to dunk on Bay Area fashion and why my TikTok feed has soooo much New York and Paris content. I’m not trying to minimize the fact that there’s great fashion in those places (really, there’s great fashion everywhere if you look). But I’m fascinated by the geopolitical and urban planning factors that shape the places we consider sartorial superpowers.
So what do the best-known sartorial capitols have in common? Well, they tend to be dense urban spaces in the Global North.
Let’s talk about density first. Street style as a concept was borne out of the “modern” urban city, where you live, work and play in close proximity to others. There is also a prevailing belief that the more walkable a city, the better the street style. Density creates the necessary conditions for constant human interaction and collaboration, which extends to style.
There is a geopolitical hierarchy within fashion, which is important to acknowledge because it’s been shaped by colonization, capitalism, imperialism, etc. There are incredibly dense urban spaces in the Global South, but rarely are they cited as “street style capitals” or creative hubs. I mean, the number of times I see white influencers with clothing lines go to India and talk about the “local culture” and “textiles” and “hard-working women” in such an infantilizing way…My favorite fashion sociologist Minh-Ha Pham talks about this a lot. In her book Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, she explains that while the Global North is seen as a place of creative expression, the Global South is reduced into simply a place of raw materials. The resource exploitation of the Global South means they’re portrayed as “underdeveloped” in all ways, including arenas of fashion and taste.
I also wonder about the seemingly random places like Marfa that break into the larger fashion consciousness. A tiny town in the middle of the Texan desert that somehow has a Prada pop-up store. Kyle Chayka uses the “Bilbao Effect” concept to explain Marfa’s transformation from “anti-commercial escape” to “Mecca of luxury minimalism.” When architect Frank Gehry opened the Bilbao Guggenheim in 1997, the museum’s iconic cultural status pulled into tourism dollars and new artistic communities over the next decade. It’s an economic facelift via giant Yayoi Kusama pumpkin installations.
“The tactic has been adopted everywhere from Denver and Athens to Abu Dhabi, Leipzig, and the Japanese island of Naoshima.”
I asked you on Instagram: what do you think are the most underrated fashion cities, and why?
There were ~300 replies. I read them all and here are the themes that stood out.
Cities in Asia were mentioned for shape and silhouette
Cities in New England mentioned for college student style and arts scene
Cities in cold climates were mentioned for dressing creatively for the cold
Cities in Southern America were mentioned for color and emerging designers
A few favorite replies:
Navajo reservation: “layering silver, turquoise, and velvet”
Brighton: “gay English seaside town, so colorful and sun”
New Orleans: “unique subcultures in a gorgeous old city full of creative energy”
Taipei: “even the most casually dressed people had a great sense of silhouette”
Savannah: “SCAD is here, and students are notoriously innovative with style”
Oakland: “California queers combine grunge with couture”
Oaxaca: “the clothes are made and cut so uniquely”