The Cut published a piece last week by Brock Colyar that’s been doing the rounds. It’s titled “It must be nice to a West Village girl” and like most pieces from The Cut, has set the internet alight with equal parts intrigue, outrage, and debate.

My gut reaction was one of fascination. I’m a sucker for a piece that dissects a city’s micro-culture. I am constantly intrigued by how we weave our postcodes into our identities. How the place we call home signals our values, tastes, interests and worldview.

Naturally, this deep dive into the West Village Girl had me hooked, mainly because of how strongly people want to belong to this clique. But also because of what this desire for uniformity reveals about our evolving perception of cool…

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For the uninitiated, the piece profiles a new wave of young women who have seemingly taken over New York’s West Village. Part satire, part anthropology, and (in my humble opinion) entirely baffling, it attempts to define what it now means to be a “West Village Girl”: typically in her late twenties or early thirties, white, socially ambitious, working in PR, marketing, or finance with influencing on the side, and living a life of curated ease.

What struck me most was the uniformity of it all. As Miranda McKeon, one of the West Village girls interviewed, says: “There’s a cult mentality [here].” These women - young, with a penchant for main character energy - moved to the city with ambition and a vision board. They landed in the West Village to live out their New York City dreams.

“They move through the neighbourhood in packs,” Colyar writes, “wearing the local uniform: a white tank, light-wash jeans, and Sambas, an iced matcha latte in hand, and hair slicked back into a tight ponytail.”

There’s no doubt Sex and the City played a role. Many of these women, myself included, grew up idolising those iconic characters - thirty-something, fashion-forward, sex-positive, self-possessed. In many ways, they were the blueprint for the “modern-day woman”. Charlotte aside, they weren’t bound by traditional ideals (get married, have a child, settle down). They showed us how to navigate life, work, love, friendship, and everything in between.

TikTok has also had a big part to play. Women from across the country - nay, the world - have fawned over West Village influencers from their childhood bedroom and college dorms. They love their life, their lifestyle, their ambition, their friends. And so, they move there to be just like her. To work hard to play hard. To be into “Pilates, Cartier bracelets, Blank Street, Hugo spritzes, Reformation, and [a] dachshund.”

What I find most fascinating is just how much people want to be part of this clique. There is, it seems, an undeniable pull. After all, you can spot a West Village girl in almost any city: sipping an Aperol Spritz with her girlfriends, idolising Alex Cooper, dating up a storm.

Then again, aren’t we all searching for a subculture to identify with? Whether it’s a Charlie girl, a Hayley girl, or a West Village girl – most of us are just trying to signal that we belong – to something, to someone, to some idea of who we think we should be.

Colyar even goes so far as to describe the West Village as a kind of “sorority” - a homogenised mass of women who are unabashedly basic (“Being basic isn’t a bad thing,” one of them remarks). What’s striking is how unapologetic the sameness is. There’s comfort in it: a warm, soft uniformity that gives people permission to opt out of individuality altogether.

In an era defined by overwhelming choice, is it any real wonder that we yearn for this kind of structure? Aspiring to an archetype feels easier than doing the uncomfortable, messy work of figuring out who we uniquely are and who we desire to be. There’s a comforting kind of certainty that comes from adopting a character who seems to have it all figured out.

Maybe this is just the plight of the modern world. Thanks to social media, we’re being pushed to identify and brand ourselves to an almost unhealthy degree. I’m not sure we were ever meant to perceive ourselves as much as we do now - the constant mirrors, comparison, curation. Is it any surprise that we find solace in an archetype? It does some of the heavy lifting. It tells us what to wear, what to buy, where to go, and what to like.

And in that way, I feel a certain compassion for the “West Village girl”. She may not look like me, or dress like me - but she represents something deeply human. A desire to belong. To be understood. To find shape and meaning in this tumult we call modern life.

Another element that caught my eye is what the West Village Girl’s look says about our evolving perception of cool. While it’s not my personal style, there’s no denying that women around the world want to emulate it. They want to wear the same light-wash jeans and Aritzia puffer, drink the same drinks, go to the same places.

Uniformity has become the mainstream aspiration. Once upon a time, cool meant originality. Individuality. Subversion. Now, it feels increasingly like consensus.

Has our sense of what’s cool become entirely dependent on repetition? Based on how many times we’ve seen it before? Is taste now just exposure, dressed up as preference? And is the rise of the West Village Girl just the latest example of this phenomenon playing out on a global scale?

Maybe so. Maybe so.

Originally published 16 May 2025.

Original piece can be read here.

Images sourced from Kit Keenen (@kitkeenan) and Miranda McKeon (@miranda.mckeon)