I get it. It’s been cool to talk about how uncool Williamsburg is since as long as I’ve been here, so that’s at least three years. Hipsters haven’t been around for probably a good decade. It’s also old hat to comment about the many fancy luxury brands that have been throwing up ads, splashy events, stores and otherwise making their presence known in this patch east of the East River.

The gentrification has been four decades in the making but really picked up the pace in the past few years. In 2023, I got the scoop on Chanel opening up a beauty store on North 6th St. Soon after, I attended an Hermes runway show, which was the first event held at the refurbished Domino Sugar Factory. It’s been a popular spot for fashion brands with Tory Burch showing her spring 2025 collection there, while Michael Kors took it outside with a show in Domino Park.

It’s the kind of neighborhood where you don’t blink when your coffee order approaches $10, where rents for one-bedrooms on the waterfront are scraping $7,000. And while making six figures is considered a career milestone elsewhere, in these parts it is the minimum cut off in order to even apply for affordable housing—at least for the kind of towering developments that have sprung up along the Brooklyn waterfront stretching from Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and up to Long Island City.

Which is to say, it’s grotesquely expensive.

But there are a number of billboards I’ve spotted around the neighborhood that have made me realize more specifically how things are changing. Not just that the affluent abound but a certain type of moneyed person—crypto folks. Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange, has been plastering ads on both the north and south ends of Williamsburg joining Cartier, Bvlgari and a wide range of luxury brands. Next to the larger Gemini ad was one for the watch brand Audemars Piguet and their collab with KAWS. Yes, that KAWS, the one that produces cartoonish sculptures that figure as part of every crypto bro’s starter pack.

It caught Bloomberg’s attention enough that they put out this piece calling the neighborhood a crypto hotspot, offering up the local pizzerias and coffee shops taking payment via digital coins and the NFT graffiti on Roebling Street that runs an entire block as evidence.

People like to say that Williamsburg hasn’t exported any real cultural trends in a decade but I’d argue the current moment here can actually clue us into the future of national and even global consumerism. Money powers culture and Trump’s unleashing of a new crop of crypto millionaires will see their tastes (whatever you make of it) reshape fashion and the wider cultural landscape.

Why Williamsburg?

Williamsburg overall is filled with founders and other startup types, which was not what I expected when I landed here. I thought it would be more like Hong Kong where workers for big banks, accounting and law firms are the mainstay. But traditional companies pushed for an earlier, stringent return to office so high-paid corporates prefer Manhattan still. Living in Williamsburg and getting to midtown is a nearly 50 minute commute and subway transfer. Startups, on the other hand remain remote-friendly, making it more conducive to living on this side of the East River.

What might a typical Saturday look like in the life of a crypto bro here? Climbing at Vital Gym surely, then a visit to the nearby Kith store on North 12th St to pick up a $400 hoodie and grab a snack at their Treats cafe. In the evening, if it’s a night out—dinner at Francie to order their $148 dry-aged duck followed by drinks at Maison Premiere and letting loose at Nightmoves. A quieter evening could look like catching up with a buddy by competitively cold plunging at Bathhouse, a social sauna that’s powered by bitcoin mining.

Techies have been the butt of bland dressing jokes ever since their inception. But whereas the stereotypical early Googler or Facebook employee donned schlubby outfits and drove beat up Toyotas as a reverse-flex, crypto bros are kind of flashy. Even among mainstream tech, the sentiment has moved from perfunctory quasi-uniforms to an unapologetic interest in fashion. Mark Zuckerberg’s style makeover has shifted him from gray hoodies to gold chains and graphic shirts. What is Elon Musk wearing on stage these days? Other than haphazard hideous that is.
 
During crypto winter, the prices of Rolexes, Patek Philippes and other high-end watches cratered so an obvious assumption is that they’ll swell again in tandem with BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies. My money is on Pharrell William’s Louis Vuitton, which has steered fashion firmly in the direction of hype and away from craft, and Tiffany & Co, a brand that’s courted crypto fans more aggressively with the release of cryptopunk necklaces and NFTiffs.

Vuori, an athleisure company with a $5.5 billion valuation, always seemed overinflated to me but may actually make more sense now given the crypto boom. (They’ve invested a lot in women’s but last I checked, their product design screams men’s brand to me.) Maybe social saunas and cold plunge venues like the VC-backed Othership could be another theme to play. And then, I’d also bet on anything from Daniel Arsham. The artist was a Williamsburg resident for a time, is a friend of Pharrell and collaborator of the aforementioned luxury brands, and graciously bestowed upon the world this monstrous statue of Zuckerberg’s wife.

Demographics and Demand

According to real estate advisory Lantern Company, which was advertising an empty space on the main drag on North 6th, there are 158,000 residents in the area and over a fifth of them earn $200,000+ a year.

Average apparel expenditure is $3,212 and dining is $5,077, although unhelpfully it doesn’t specify over what. Per quarter? Per year?

Not all of Williamsburg shopping is so crypto-coded. A prime retail strip is developing along North 6th between Berry all across to Kent. In the last year, The North Face, Reformation, and Farm Rio have launched here and Abercrombie & Fitch is soon to join them. Hermes is the boldest-faced name to invest. They opened a small accessories and home store late last year, a precursor to a much larger flagship that will debut a year and a half from now. Another quirk about the shopping here? How much it’s controlled by a single player. L3 Capital hoovered up a number of lots during Covid-19 from a Jewish family and has since developed the bulk of Class-A properties.

Despite a clear rising tide, the calculus to invest here isn’t that straightforward. Tombolo, purveyor of fun resort-style matching sets, opened up on Metropolitan and Wythe. It was only a block away from Todd Snyder, Double RL, and J. Crew but that block probably did make all the difference. They gave up within a few months due to the lack of foot traffic, and was replaced by Jones Road, the beauty line from makeup artist Bobbi Brown.

Caught in the Crypto Hype

A few days ago, I got an excited call from a friend. “Check this out,” he said, sending me a screenshot. It was of the Dior Instagram account. The brand had launched a crypto coin on Solana just minutes ago. “You and I should each buy some right now.”

“What the hell,” I thought, “might be fun.”

Being the noob that I am though, I was locked out of my Binance account—which turned out to be a good thing. The post was a fake by hackers.

But people had already piled in, it surged and the hackers made away with over $100,000 in half an hour before the post was deleted. The wording did seem a little off but in my defense, luxury brands have been trying to figure out how best to cater to this new-money set. If they’re considering accepting crypto as payment for shoes and bags, it’s not so farfetched that a brand like Dior would launch their own coin. In any case, Dior never officially acknowledged the incident. And in truth, that’s what I wish was more of an option for this coming cryptofication deluge.

What Else Is On My Mind

• This VC thinks we’re entering the third wave of online shopping: the Agentic Commerce Era. “Soon, we will be able to trust that AI agents will surf the digital ecosystem to get us exactly what we need, when we need it, at the best possible price.”

• The popularity of penis filler keeps, er, growing.

• Luxury sales have been soft lately but Hermes and Moncler are the exceptions bucking the sector’s slowdown. Hermes confirmed they would launch haute couture by 2027, which is very! exciting! news! And in a commendable move, distributed a $5,000 bonus to every one of its employees for posting stronger than expected results.

• Plenty of deals activity. Tapestry offloaded Stuart Weitzman to Sam Edelman-parent Calares for $105 million to focus its attention on Coach and Kate Spade. Skiwear maker Helly Hansen also transferred hands. It was bought by Kontoor Brands, which owns Lee and Wrangler, for about $900 million.

• Saks, which has been struggling to keep up with its bills, told vendors it would pay them back in dribs and drabs. Past-due payments will be paid out in 12 installments, which doesn’t sound so bad, until this part: starting in July. The department store merged with Neiman Marcus last year to ostensibly create a luxury powerhouse in this sagging sector. They’re also betting on a new deal to start selling luxury on Amazon to help with the turnaround. If you need to catch up, here’s a very detailed breakdown of the Neiman Marcus restructuring.

• Both WSJ and NYT published pieces on a fur resurgence on the same day. Perhaps the mob wives trend was more than a blip.

• Old Spice has the Old Spice Dude, Mountain Dew has the Mountain Dude, and Burberry turned their equestrian logo into an IRL knight. Should other brands give their logos this treatment? The Ralph Lauren bear comes to mind.

• This took over my algo but am I the only one who does not want to eat Yves Saint Laurent sushi?

• Which cheap cashmere is best? WashPo put Quince, Naadam, and Uniqlo to the test.

• In collaborations: Nike is hoping Kim Kardashian can shift it out of its slump with NikeSkims. Altuzarra also did some clothing with Victoria’s Secret as its “first-ever designer in residence”, which is actually kind of nice and very wearable. I’m not sure it’ll move the needle though.

• Loewe made a very big, very golden statement with its new Shanghai flagship store.

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