Eat, drink, pose: How restaurants have become the new red carpets

Day in and day out, all throughout this past year, celebrities have been an endless spring of social media buzz. With X and TikTok as a 24-hour showcase, we not only know where everyone and their mother has been; we also know what they wore. Almost always random sightings, in ordinary moments — be it strolling down the street, pumpkin latte in hand, dragging a suitcase at the airport or cruising the stores. But, most of all, going in and out of bars and restaurants. Those in New York — and some in Los Angeles — have become a true stream of pop, film and fashion idols dressed to impress like we hadn’t seen in a long time, to the point that a table seems harder to come by these days than a front-row seat at a fashion show.

It is all there, down to the last detail. Rihanna with Balenciaga pantaboots, and A$AP Rocky in Bottega Veneta, on their way to the Carbone. Kendall Jenner, casually pantless, leaving I Sodi. Zoë Kravitz, Greta Gerwig and Laura Dern, all wearing The Row while having wines and appetizers at Il Buco. Hailey Bieber, in red with an Ermanno Scervino minidress and a Ferragamo minibag, arriving at Bar Pitti (several steps ahead of her husband Justin and with her head down, perhaps put off by his combination of sweatshirt, tracksuit shorts and Crocs).

And don’t even get us started on Taylor Swift, the person of the year, another regular at the bistros and clubs of the Big Apple. The Waverly Inn, Minetta Tavern, Catch Steak, Nobu, The Box, Freemans, Lucali, Zero Bond... Alone with her official boyfriend since last September, football player Travis Kelce, or in the company of her friends Selena Gomez, Blake Lively, Phoebe Bridgers and Sophie Turner, there is probably no wining and dining establishment that the pop star has not visited in the last three months, from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn via SoHo, wearing Versace, Stella McCartney, Prada, Miu Miu, Jean Paul Gaultier or Clio Peppiatt, depending on the occasion. Thanks to all those dinners and drinks we also know that Gant has become an essential for Swift, and how (the monogram sweater at the Minetta, the men’s coat at Catch Steak, the sailor blazer from her girls’ outing at Freemans, the faux fur coat she wore to her 34th birthday dinner, on December 13, at the exclusive Zero Bond). A surprising love that has more than benefited the mid-range brand after its recent international relaunch, including the opening of a New York flagship store.

“They’re excited to be who they are, and fashion is key,” says Phil Meynell, owner of The Mulberry, a trendy cocktail bar in Lower Manhattan where Margot Robbie is a regular. “A great restaurant or bar is a chosen community. It’s already curated — the design, the people, the vibe. People are using these venues as a way to reenter the world with intention and joy. And they’re really dressing the part,” adds Kaitlin Price, managing partner at Jac’s on Bond, the epicenter of the Fendi baguette revival. Of course, this is nothing new: from Stephen Sondheim’s Ladies Who Lunch to Halston and Jackie O’s dinners at Elaine’s in the 1970′s, not forgetting all the cigarettes that Marc Jacobs, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista smoked at the door of Café Tabac in the 1990s, in New York, fame has never gone hungry.

What is truly remarkable, however, is how while privacy used to be sought, with celebrities avoiding flashes, trying to cover lenses and even smacking the photographers who got in their way, today they surrender to the camera, urging or almost demanding its presence to properly register their appearance. In a society like today’s, in which relations are built more than ever with images, it may seem logical. But, of course, the whole thing also has hints of commercial strategy. “A lot of stylists and creative directors use dinner as a way to test-drive new looks,” explains Anthony Geich, director of guest relations at Sona, the three-Michelin-star Indian restaurant co-owned by actress Priyanka Chopra.

Not long ago, Kendall Jenner was seen in Aspen, Colorado, walking up and down the snowy landscape in an assortment of leather jackets, anoraks and fur coats, including a Phoebe Philo hand-painted faux mink coat that retails for $27,000. The pictures immediately collapsed the social network formerly known as Twitter. Later, it became known that the whole thing had been a promotional plan for the pop-up shop that FWRD, the online luxury store in which the model works as a creative director since 2021, opened ahead of the holiday season at the ski resort of the rich and famous. Meanwhile, her colleague Gigi Hadid reappeared on the streets of New York with a hot dog in one hand and Miu Miu Arcadie mini bag in the other: it turns out that the Italian brand was also doing a seasonal campaign there. It goes without saying that the paparazzi that chase them are on the payroll of brands and celebrities.

Something highly valued right now in the exclusive clothing business is the image of (alleged) normality, in accordance with the precepts of the much-talked-about quiet luxury. The campaigns based on paparazzi-style photographs (Bottega Veneta, with A$AP Rocky and the ubiquitous Kendal Jenner, who is also in Gucci’s campaign with her ex, Bud Bunny, as if they had been caught at an airport) are quite successful in advertising terms. The maximum expression of capitalism, relying on situationism. Who would have thought.

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