Everyone's Talking About West Village Girls
Spoiler Alert: They're in every city.
Today we’ll be covering the New York Mag article It Must Be Nice to be a West Village Girl and the conversation that continued in
’s chat room.Here’s my take: The female Ivy League post grad crowd make up some of the West Village population. Data shows they generate significantly to the neighborhoods economy by paying rent, and spending their (own/daddy’s money) eating in the local restaurants, drinking matcha, sweating it out at wellness studios and shopping at the retailers who essentially were curated for them. (Set/Leset/Stoney Clover). The neighborhood also financially benefits from the WVG’s TikTok cultivated trends. The general consensus from the WVG’s are they get to live in an area of New York City that has been curated to tailor their wants and needs. It is a short term life plan for them to enjoy their 20’s-30’s while gaining work experience, making new friends and they feel safe! If you ask an OG West Villager - few are disgruntled over the change and how it effects getting a seat at their regular Italian lunch spot. Most have witnessed New York evolve time and time again with each generation and understand this is just how things are. They appear to be unphased by the new wave of WVGs understanding they too will wash away eventually like every thing else.
If you are not familiar with Emily Sundberg, she writes FEEDME, the #4 business newsletter on Substack - covering the spirit of enterprise daily. Emily also has the #1 chat room on the platform. This weeks buzz the aforementioned NYM article.
What I found most interesting in the FEEDME chat room was the comparison of WVG’s to other similar versions of female Zillennials located across other American cities.
The WVG’s and girls alike make up a generational micro-culture. I find the ideation that they are a threat to the entirety of any city or neighborhood comical.
Toronto, where I am based, has a significant population of young adult women aged 20-30. Based on available demographic data, the 25-29 age group alone accounts for approximately 122,585. Similarly, the 30-34 age group has about 123,935. That total number makes up 8.8% of the 2.8 million people population and 50% of the downtown core. It’s no mystery that young women aged 20-30 in Toronto, New York and across America tend to live in vibrant, well-connected neighborhoods with access to work, entertainment, and social life.
Where to spot a Toronto WVG in the wild: She’s wearing 473 at her Equinox Pilates class. Grabbing coffee at Sam James, brunching at Manita, sipping espresso martinis/cocktails at Paris Paris and Bar Banane, dining out with her girlies at Alder and Sunny’s Chinese, and hooking up at Evangeline at the Ace Hotel or King Taps.
She shops for her uniform at Aritzia and lines up outside Brandy Melville on weekends. They are the basics, they are the cool and nice girls, they care about deep connections, looking and feeling amazing and making their dreams come true. Power to the future of level headed, healthy, successful women!