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Community Trends: Fashion Trend in Flushing and Alphabet City

    This week, I chose two complete different NYC boroughs to research. One is Flushing in Queens and one is Alphabet City in Manhattan. After taking some time meandering around the streets, visiting the shops, and observing what is happening around me, I was able to have a understanding of how fashion trends differ between those two communities within NYC.

FLUSHING

    Flushing is within Queens and bordered by Whitestone, Kew Garden Hills, College Point, Bayside, Flushing Meadows, Utopia, and Fresh Meadows. It is a place where Asian cultures thrive. The neighborhood has the feel of an third-tier city in China, but is definitely more crowded. It is really noisy and messy on the street. Junks are everywhere. There are a lot of bicycles parking on the street and lock with telegraph poles.

    Most of the people in Flushing are originated from China. There are also a few Latin Americans. The age range varies a lot. From babies lying inside a baby car, to teenagers, adults and even old men and ladies. However, old people are the most. It has an equal proportion of both genders in the area. You can also see many buses on the street.

    One of the most shocking thing I found in Flushing is that the shopping habits their is all about cheap. Every shop, it says “on sale”, “80% off” or “Season clearance” which is something that I have never seen in any other places before. There is a very remarkable scene is that many people are handling red plastic bags. After, buying groceries in the supermarket and fruits from the shop on street, I was handling those red plastic bags, too. Sellers there like to have their stall exposed to the street. Of course, everything is actually really cheap, from food to clothes. You can easily buy a pair of nice looking shoes there for only 15 dollars and a box of fresh blueberries for only 1 dollar. There are also many advertisement on the street.

    Most people’s wear casually with basic T-shirts, dark blue denim jeans and sport shoes. There are many young woman  holding fake Chanel bags and dying their hair into those cheap orange brown color. Coach is also very popular among older women. Young men like to wear those cheesy street wear. Adidas's sport shoes and clothes from Off-White are very common to see on street. It is hard to describe the style of people’s look on the street since everyone is wearing so differently. Kids love to wear clothes with pictures of cartoon animals on the front of their clothes.

    There was one very thrilling incident on the way. When I was trying to leave Flushing and taking the elevator inside the subway station to get to another floor, the elevator suddenly crashed. So me and an old lady were stuck in the elevator at that time. It took about an hour until the fire department came to save us. It offered me a great chance to have direct talk with people living at the neighborhood. The old lady was wearing a black and white print shirt and black pants with a cross bag on her shoulder. She told me that her daughter immigrated to America and brought her together a decade before. She was living at an apartment in queens and she came to flushing just for grocery shopping and she could not believe that this kind of thing would happen to her. It seemed that most of the Chinese people in Flushing are people who live nearby.

ALPHABET CITY

    Alphabet City is the area encompassing Avenues A, B, C and D from 14th Street to Houston Street. It is a bohemian enclave inside the East Village. It is more like an old school New York for me. It has acquired a sense of affluence and stylishness even as it remains a bastion of middle class dwellings and subsidized housing.

    There is a large proportion of Latin Americas with dark skins gathering in that area. Constructions are very common to see on the street. Many new buildings are rises in that area since Alphabet City is developing quickly recently and need more residences. The area is filled with plants, gardens, big trucks and beautiful giaphities on the wall. It is more common to see old men walking on the street than old women. It is quit quiet on the street and there is almost no Asian people. Usually there is only five people walking on each street. I happened to see a lot of people walking their dogs on the street and most dogs they have are big dogs that can reach people’s hips.

    There are many people wearing athletic wear and coming out of a gym. Women wearing waistcoat and leggings and man wearing vest and shorts. There are also a large portion of people having a big sport backpack filling with a lot of things inside and wearing those daddy’s baseball cap. White people in the area like white cotton bags on there shoulder. Many white girls like wearing those elegant floral dresses. However, most white women wear vest and short jeans and women with darker skin wear pure color T-shirt and dark pants. It is hardly to see people wearing skinny jeans on the street. Old lady really love wearing big sun hat sand canvas cross bags. Old men love wearing polo shirt and long loose pants. Young men love wearing round neck T-shirt and shorts. There are also young men wearing hair band and sport shoes running on the street. 

    Compared to large supermarkets like CVS and DR, there are more personal shops like grocery and deli. Shops on the street have nice looking display windows. Hairdressers, massage shops, hardware stores, tattoo shops, coffee shops, vintage clothing stores are more common to sea. For the restaurant, there may be Indian food and Latin food.

    People all seem to wear very normally and casual, however, in that area, I was able to see funky stores and eccentric people. I entered an unworn vintage store and all the pieces inside their were amazing. There was an old gentleman came there and looking for clothes. It seemed that he was a frequent visitor to that store. He asked the owner of the shop for whether there was new items being place recently.

    I saw an old lady with white hair wearing mountaineering sandals with black leggings and enormously stunning sapphire blue shirt and pale blue skirt. Which may be a normal style for her but it exactly followed the fashion trend nowadays. Her top is very similar to one of the pieces for this season's Helmut Lang and her whole look is very Acne Studios. 

    Basically, there is a lot more people in Flushing than in Alphabet City. There is almost only Asian people in Flushing and there are more varied people in Alphabet City. Men smoke a lot in Flushing on the street. However, it is more neat in Alphabet City. You could hardly see people smoking on the street. 


    It is hard to say that which one is more current or trendsetting than the other since most of the people wear casually and normal. However, there are more eccentric and fashion people that spots out from the crowd in Alphabet City. Young people in Flushing also spend time styling themselves, but most pieces they wear are those out of trend streetwear with odd prints and English letters.

    The shops in Alphabet City is definitely more delicate than those in flushing. They have nice display window and beautifully displayed products inside stores. It is fun to see that in both neighborhoods, old people like to bring carts on the street to do grocery shoppings. In alphabet city, all the carts are made or metal. However, in Flushing, half of the carts are made of canvas.

    Although most people wear sport shoes these days, I could even find several women wearing high heels on the street in Flushing. There are some men wearing causal leather shoes. But in Alphabet city, everyone is wearing running sport shoes or sandals and there is no high-heeled shoes on the street. Young women wearing feminism dress and pair with sport shoes is common to see in Alphabet city.

    There are huge difference of people’s fashion in different boroughs. Even at the borderline of each neighborhood, I could tell a huge difference of people’s fashion. People’s trend are affected by many reasons. However, the environment and the lifestyle really determined a lot how people were and what would most likely to become a trend.