Watch out, New Yorkers! Svetlana Legetic’s brand of D.C. cool is coming your way. At a party last night at the Gibson Guitar Showcase, Legetic announced she is stepping back from day-to-day editorial oversight of Brightest Young Things and handing it off to two longtime contributors, the City Paper reports.
Legetic’s new focus, with BYT enjoying in 2011 its first profitable year as a purveyor of all things fun and fashionable, is an expansion to New York:
The first BYTxNYC event is actually next Thursday at Le Poisson Rouge in Lower Manhattan: a showcase co-sponsored with Thievery Corporation’s label, ESL Music, featuring The Funk Ark, Federico Aubele, Ursula 1000 and Chico Mann. The real coming-out is this summer, when Brightest Young Things will launch an events operation and a New York section of its website. In D.C., Brightest Young Things is able to put Corcoran staffers and Black Cat regulars in the same room, but in New York, those worlds don’t overlap as significantly, Legetic says,. So Brightest Young Things’ big New York landing may come in the form of several large, varied events.
But it’s not like New York is lacking in brands that operate in the music, arts and fashion scenes the way BYT dominates those spheres in D.C. It’s just that, as Jonathan L. Fischer argues, New York websites like Impose and Brooklyn Vegan aren’t “omnipresent” the way BYT is here, though that doesn’t seem to be Legetic’s goal for the expansion plans:
[A]fter visiting recently—and meeting with labels, music venues, art galleries, hotels, brands she’s worked with like vitaminwater and J. Crew—Legetic became convinced there’s room for her website and its parties. “The goal isn’t to be this omnipresence in New York,” she says. “We don’t have these very elaborate plans. This is how BYT is: ‘Just pack your bag and go there.'”
One thing BYT might want to show off to its new New York competitors: Pool parties. Those summertime get-togethers at the Capitol Skyline Hotel can be fun, and actually take place in a swimming pool, unlike the McCarren Pool parties, which last year moved to a parking lot.
