This Coffee Shop for Influencers Will Serve ‘Designer Lattes’

If you go to a contemporary coffee shop in our current age of social media, you’re probably going to see people Instagramming their lattes. Maybe you’ll spot someone holding up their hand-stamped cup in front of a wallpapered facade, or, worse yet, putting their foam-heart-topped latte on the ground to get that perfect overhead shot. If these behaviors make you shake your head at the state of the world, then you may want to steer clear of New York’s upcoming Coffee ‘n Clothes café, which seems to be hyper-specifically designed for social media influencers.

Coffee ‘n Clothes is a decently popular Instagram account (it currently has more than 300,000 followers) that mostly posts pictures of manicured hands holding cups of coffee next to designer clothing. Its spinoff page Designer Lattes (tagline: “only drink designer”) posts exclusively branded lattes like the one above, with a New Balance logo made of milk foam. As both accounts announced last week, “@coffeenclothes is opening up a café in NYC serving up @designerlattes. Opens 3/15.” It will be on the ground floor of Showfields, a representative for the brand told MUNCHIES via email.

While we don’t know specifically what’s going to be on the menu, reports from Eater and Gothamist that claimed it would be selling “the most expensive latte you can drink” appear to be incorrect. “We will not be selling ‘the most expensive latte,’” a representative told MUNCHIES. “That was an old slogan used years ago on an Instagram post.” What we can expect, however, is “content opportunities for a personalized coffee experience.”

There haven’t yet been many details released, but if the virtual café on the brand’s website is any indication, the Coffee ‘n Clothes café will definitely be influencer bait. There are wavy swooshes and metallic columns that evoke the Glossier showroom and touches of green and—of course—Millennial pink that call to mind Cha Cha Matcha. As Coffee ‘n Clothes founder Ryan Glick told MUNCHIES, the café that opens this week, however, will be “much more minimal.“

Presumably, coffee is the lure to get Millennials with disposable income to buy shit and show it off on Instagram, all the while pushing #coffeenclothes branding. “Cool cafes already exist,” Glick recently told WWD. “We’re a bridge between fashion and beauty brands and coffee.”

Accordingly, the virtual café’s walls display things like Yeezys and Nike Air Max’s, plus macrame bucket bags and $1,000 Gucci mules, all of them linking to purchase points.

There’s a little irony here. In a 2015 interview, Glick told W Magazine that aspiring influencers should avoid “to-go cups [and] logos” if they wanted their photos to be shared on Coffee ‘n Clothes’ account. “I don’t like to have a blatant Starbucks logo, for example,” Glick said, though he did add that this applied a little less to fashion. Four years later, the brand is clearly going all-in on just that: logo’d to-go cups and logo’d lattes.

We’re not sure what drinks we can expect from the brick-and-mortar café, but they’re sure as hell going to be designer.