West Hempstead is a small, quiet town located in Long Island. This town has a mix of many cultures that all live together with little to no problems. Everyone respects each other’s cultures, beliefs, and religion. The two main religions in this town is Christianity and Judaism.

The Christian families wear whatever clothing is trending now. For males this consist of jeans, sweatpants, Adidas slides, hoodies, and T-Shirts. These clothes are bought from Roosevelt Field Mall, either from American Eagle, Hollister, or Adidas. The logos for at least one of these stores can be found on everyone walking around town, whether it’s on their hat, shirt, pants, or shoes. It is walking advertisement whenever a male from my town goes out in public. It is very casual wear, nothing to attract attention directly to you like bright colors. Very neutral colors like white, black, blue, grey, and brown occasionally. For women there are jeans, leggings, hoodies, T-shirts, and shorts. Women buy their clothing for stores like Victoria’s Secret, Cotton On, Pink, H&M, Forever 21, and American Eagle mostly.

A lot of the shopping is done at Roosevelt Field Mall and this mall contains many different stores to appease everyone’s taste in fashion. There is a Hot Topic for the kids who are feeling rebellious, dark, and mysterious. Then you have American Eagle for casual clothing that you can wear to school or to just hang with friends. Every store is different and the people who go inside match the clothing inside. With Hot Topic you see many people in dark, spiked clothing, and dyed hair. While at American Eagle, you see blue jeans, grey, green, black, red shirts, and in the summertime jean shorts for girls and cargo shorts for guys.

The Jewish section of my town dresses very conservatively. On the weekends you see the men dressed in black suits with white button down shirts with hats on. The women are in dresses that are past their knees, halfway between the knees and ankles. They dress well because they are going to the Synagogue but on weekdays they also dress like this for work and school. The males were Yamakas on their heads for religious purposes.

My town you can see a distinct difference between who is apart of what culture. Depending on what religion you are apart of has a huge impact on the type of clothing you wear. A couple of examples of non religious people or more liberal religions may be observed in the pictures below.

I find SoHo to be one of the most intriguing neighborhoods in New York City. Everything about and in SoHo screams fashion and art, even the people walking the streets. When given this engagement project, I was excited because it gave me a reason to stroll the streets of SoHo and look at it from another perspective. I went into many clothing stores and cafes, noticing the different vibe that I got by just being in that neighborhood. It’s an environment where there is a sensation to fully express yourself through fashion and art. No one really judges, as they find interest and attraction in how unique one can be.

From what I gathered, the majority of the people wear vintage or high end clothing. But no matter what they wear, almost everyone’s style was different in one way or the other. I found, just like many other people, that there was more to SoHo than just the fashion. As I walked down the streets, what really seemed to appeal to me were the buildings. Personally, I found the architecture more than amazing.  The majority of the buildings are cast iron buildings. In the designs of the buildings, it is easily noticeable that the architects must’ve been inspired by classical French and Italian designs.

I chose the clothing store, Brandy Melville, as my fashion of focus. Brandy Melville is a clothing line that has come straight from Italy. Most of their stores are in Italy. Only recently did they start opening up smaller stores in the United States, starting with California. Since the first store    location in the United States was in California, the clothing design has more of a beachy-cali look to it, which attracts to more young females. At the same time, it is mixed in with the European- vintage style. I find that the majority of the clothing are on the basic side, with most of the colors ranging in white, grey, and black. There are, however, a few bright pieces that are still on the more basic side. It makes it easy to incorporate such simplistic, yet outstanding pieces into your wardrobe. 

I find it interesting that the designers were able to combine their Italian designs with those of California. It makes the clothing line much more appealing, especially since there is still simplicity in the vintage pieces.

I’ve learned to accept that I choose to spend more time in Jackson Heights than I do in Astoria, which is where I live. Every year, the people of Jackson Heights hold a big parade down 37th avenue. They do this to embrace the wide variety of Hispanic traditions that are practiced from different countries in Central and South America. I attended school in the area from kindergarten to twelfth grade. The majority of my friends live in the neighborhood and identify themselves as Colombian. I heavily admired their culture ever since I was a little girl. My old school has several different shops attached to the side of the building, and one of them always managed to catch my eye.

The name of the boutique is Cali Caliente and it has been there for as long as I can remember. This store carries various types of costumes, soccer jersey’s, and Colombian pride clothing. The mannequin’s facing the window and the clothing that they are wearing have helped me come to terms with my body. I began to notice that Colombian culture embraces curves on a woman more than society as a whole. The boutique advertises fitted clothing that aims to accentuate the natural shape of a woman. Passing by this store every day for the last thirteen years has been a blessing in disguise. In my eyes, the store represents confidence, courage, and femininity. As I entered to take notes for this project I immediately was amazed. As I entered the shop, I noticed the common red, blue, and yellow theme used to represent Colombia. The store aims to sell female clothing that accentuates the realistic body image of most girls. I noticed that majority of the woman who entered had a similar physique to the mannequins. Every customer that walked in when I was there spoke to the worker’s in Spanish and they seemed to put a lot of effort into fashion; I am under the assumption that they were Colombian due to all the Colombian flag clothing I saw being purchased.

A common shoe many customers seemed to be wearing were wedges. Many women who entered the store were wearing pants that accentuated their butt’s by the precise cut of the jeans and the various designs embroidered on the back. Spanish music was playing loudly and every customer and worker in the store had a smile on their face. They sold several fitted and evening dresses at the boutique. They were very hard to miss since they consisted of bright colors and a lot of sequins.

They also had a section devoted to a specific yellow Colombian soccer jersey. They had a wide variety of sizes for the jersey because they are very popular in the neighborhood. They also have a wide variety of Halloween costumes for adult women. They were not inexpensive and each item had a lot of detail. A large amount of the kids of the customers were drawn to the costumes and many had the urge to touch them. The store consisted of a lot of tight fitted clothing and bright colors. I love how the store and everything sold inside is able to draw attention. When walking past this store every day, I learned that embracing your culture is very important and woman of all colors and sizes should be able to wear whatever they want and feel confident in it.

– Julia Francione

Fordham Center is one of the major shopping centers in the Bronx. The people that shop there are very diverse because, around Fordham Road, there are major NYC attractions like the New York Botanical Gardens, the Bronx Zoo, and Arthur Avenue. The transit there is effortless since Fordham has many bus and train lines including the Metro North. Throughout Fordham, the women fashion styles consist of tight jeans or leggings but different tops. Men, on the other hand, mostly wear sweatpants or sportswear. Fordham University students often wear clothing from Fordham University, many of their clothing has a large logo.
I witnessed the effects of gentrification in Fordham Road, although the change wasn’t too big it still had an impact. Gentrification started to occur when the pawn shops weren’t generating enough profits and they had to do clearance sales since many customers didn’t shop there they decided to keep these “clearance sales” going for years. These pawn shops closed down and were replaced with popular fashion stores like American Eagle or Macy’s. The restaurants here were mostly fast food burger/ pizza chains. After Fordham decided to open up more popular restaurants, there were an increased variety of choices, there were healthier options. As a result,  fewer people carried pizza slices as they were walking through the block. The people in Fordham adapted really quickly to this change since it was what the people wanted.
I went to Modell’s since it captured how dangerous the area was back then. This store was a victim of a major robbery. Although they recovered quickly it changed the way the store was set up, even after Fordham Road changed. A lot of the top sellers and other equipment were locked with padlocks and had the most advanced trackers to discourage robberies. If you wanted a specific product you had to refer to one of the staff members to unlock the rack and get the product. Although it doesn’t look appealing it the locks give the impression that it’s valuable.
The people that visit the store are diverse. They are those who are serious about sports, or the people (like me) wear their clothing cause of comfort. The clothing consists of mostly polyester or nylon fabrics for durability. The sneakers here aren’t really the designer sneakers you would find in major sneaker stores, but they have many varieties of sneakers based on certain sports. Their product placement is unusual since the top sellers are placed in the front of the store instead of the back. This is really interesting since many stores want you to go around and buy other products. Therefore the Modell’s I visited, showed a culture of a store that experienced a robbery.

All pictures were taken from Google Images.