What People Are Wearing in Bushwick
How Bushwick style became a TikTok meme
*Kicking off a New York street style series where I ask people about what they wear*
Bushwick is one of my favorite places to people-watch. The exercise often plays out like a fashion safari where the red MSCHF boots can be spotted in the wild.
The neighborhood is a true repository of underground youth culture, and I’ve always felt drawn to its countercultural ethos. Sartorially, this translates into an irreverent gender-bending patchwork of aesthetics—from everyday street style and casual prep to grunge, Y2K and avant-garde. Freedom of expression is at once a shared belief and an intimately lived experience. It’s why thrifters, queer club culture kids, drag artists, rave goers and “starving artists” all gravitate to Bushwick, giving it the reputation of an “edgy and increasingly hip” industrial area.
How did we get here? Per Untapped Cities:
A mid-1800 Dutch settlement, Bushwick became one of New York City’s biggest Italian-American neighborhoods in the 1950s. Soon after, economic challenges and demographic shifts, notably an influx of Puerto Ricans and African Americans, led to a decline in the white, non-Hispanic population to less than 40 percent. By the 1990s, Bushwick faced significant economic hardships, including a notorious drug market along Knickerbocker Avenue known as “The Well.”
Mariah Espada, a 26-year-old Puerto-Rican journalist and Bushwick native, remembers hearing stories from her relatives. “If you were here in the ‘70s, what you would see were a lot of low-income working-class Latinos who were affiliated in gangs and drug addiction,” she said on a call. “I have aunts from my dad’s side who wouldn’t dare go to Bushwick in the ‘90s.”
Born and raised on the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg, Espada shares the history of NYC neighborhoods through her passion project @HoodHistoryHere. Growing up, she and her family experienced deep traumas that underscored how unlivable the area once was. During that time, the fashion was indistinguishable from working-class New York City street style, she said. It incorporated hip-hop dress elements such as sneakers, oversized clothing and gold jewelry. “I think the fact that Bushwick is now thought of as a potential place where fashion could exist shows evolution,” she said.
Over time, an influx of white newcomers shifted the neighborhood’s demographics, leading to a 20% increase in the white population, 20% decrease in the Hispanic population, and a 7% drop in the Black community over two decades according to NYU Furman Center data. As different groups moved in, the culture inevitably changed, and so did the fashion. Today, Bushwick style is so visible it has become meme material for the digital era. So much so that creator Sam posted a viral video last year showing how to “dress like you’re in Bushwick,” which meant wearing a skirt over jeans, pairing a vintage leather jacket with a crop top, and finishing with “ugly Y2K sunglasses,” lots of jewelry, and an oversized tote bag.
“Aside from the physical evolution, which is buildings going up and warehouses being converted into clubs,” Espada explained, “what is also happening is a cultural shift in how you perceive a neighborhood.” Indeed, the meme-ification of Bushwick and Bushwick style is due in large part to its perception of cool. The fashion of low-income neighborhoods is typically overlooked until more affluent people move in. “In my opinion, aestheticizing a neighborhood does tend to erase the cultural history of said neighborhood,” Espada said. “It makes it seem as though the story starts there.”
Espada is not interested in telling people not to move in a neighborhood, but in preserving the historical elements of the neighborhoods she came up in. In the vast, overpopulated and physically finite melting pot that is New York, the convergence of multicultural groups is inevitable. But the truth about the fashion of a place is never one-dimensional.
Far be it from me to put different groups of people in a neat fashion box, I will adopt stylist and Bushwick local Rachel Waxenberg’s definition of Bushwick style, “it’s blurring the lines of gender, dressing without fear, and existing in a space of pure authenticity.”
Below, my mini report of what people wore in Bushwick this summer:
Yenni, model
“I wanted to give off the vibe of a fashion girlie going thrifting in Bushwick.”
Outfit deets: Thrifted. Skirt: Urban Outfitters. Belt: Mango (“but it looks like Paloma Wool”). Bag: Coach.