Irvine the most fashionable city in America, says report
You’ll never guess which city was just ranked as the most fashionable in the country. Not Los Angeles, home to Hollywood fashionistas. Not New York, with its famous Fashion Week and legions of pouty, leggy models. No, the title goes to Orange County’s Irvine.
That’s according to Bundle, a website that analyzes spending patterns. List-makers came to their conclusion not by polling the nation’s Anna Wintours but instead by looking at “fashion-conscious households.”
Those households were deemed as such if they had spent money at least four times at top-end designer merchants in the last 30 months.
And because Irvine not only has good schools but also high incomes and stellar shopping nearby, it ranked nearly four times above the U.S. average in clothing spending. Major malls stuffed with designer labels such as South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island are all within driving distance. Irvine’s median family income, according to the Census Bureau, is $84,950.
By Bundle’s metric, frigid Buffalo, N.Y., was the least fashionable city in the country and 10 times less style-sensitive than the average metro area.
New York was ranked the second most sartorially minded city, followed by Los Angeles.
The study clearly isn’t the last word in what really makes a city stylish. Hipster hubs such as Brooklyn, for example, failed to rank high partly because the catwalk scene there involves inexpensive vintage and indie clothing.
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