You put on your shoes, your coat, your bag. But have you ever considered your coffee cup as your final accessory? New York and London coffee shop chain Blank Street is betting on it. The mint green matcha mecca, beloved by Gen Zs on TikTok, is launching a London Fashion Week (LFW) activation today, in partnership with the British Fashion Council, as it aims to build resonance way beyond its barista drinks.
Blank Street will serve coffee and matcha in LFW’s emerging designer NewGen space, host a breakfast for press, and stage a pop-up featuring an art installation for the public at its Strand outpost (a stone’s throw from the main LFW showspace). The brand has also dropped the puffer sleeve, a limited-edition puffer jacket for your Blank Street drink, available in-store and online from February 21.
“Fashion was always an industry that we felt a kinship with, because we see the cup itself as an accessory,” says Mohammad Rabaa, global creative director of Blank Street, who has spearheaded the project. “A quick scroll through our tagged photos will show you that people are including their Blank Street cups in their OOTD videos. We are being photographed as the finishing touch to a look alongside other accessories. The cup feels like part of people’s self-expression, which I think is so exciting.”
Blank Street was founded in 2020, originally as a coffee cart near New York’s iconic Wythe Diner in Brooklyn. The chain soon expanded across Manhattan, before landing in London’s Fitzrovia in 2022. Last year, Rabaa managed the chain’s rebrand, implementing a new serif logo and Pantone “12pm green” branding across storefronts and cups, which was a hit with young consumers. As of July 2025, the company was valued at approximately $500 million, per Bloomberg, operating over 90 locations in cities spanning the US and the UK.
Blank Street is not the only coffee brand activating across the Fall/Winter 2026 season. In New York, Starbucks financially supported five emerging designers — Area, Collina Strada, Eckhaus Latta, Sergio Hudson, and Zankov — to stage their fashion shows, with a view to co-create merch and coffee sleeves. In London, Vogue will once again run its Vogue Café concept at 180 Corner Shop, in partnership with Nike, featuring customized bites and juices. While in Milan, Vogue Italia will host its own Vogue Café from February 26-28, in partnership with womenswear brand Twinset.
It makes sense. Small luxuries like matcha, coffee, or $25 smoothies have become status symbols to the Gen Zs and millennials, priced out of traditional luxury goods, who enjoy romanticizing their daily lives while posting about it online. In turn, brands like Blank Street, or LA greengrocer-turned-luxury brand Erewhon, have become lifestyle labels, while food and drink pose as a key marketing vehicle for luxury brands looking to stay connected with young people.
At fashion week, Blank Street will provide refreshments in the NewGen space, where designers including Oscar Ouyang, Lueder and Tolu Coker will present their collections. The alignment with young fashion talents was intentional. “It is an honor to be showing up specifically within the NewGen space,” Rabaa says. “We like the idea of supporting and celebrating up-and-comers who are competing against these huge legacy brands with years of heritage and whatever else. That’s how we saw ourselves. We entered this industry, and there were a few big players, and we were the little guy. So basically, we feel a kinship with these brands.”
The NewGen space may promote Blank Street to fashion insiders. But the puffer sleeve is aimed at all Blank Street fans. Inspired by the adult-sized puffer jackets and knitted drink sleeves the team made during a particularly cold trip to Edinburgh, the new sleeve is intended to either keep drinks warm, or protect your hands from a cold beverage, even in the freezing temperatures of New York. “We knew we wanted it to have a really striking design from the start,” Rabaa says. “Like, if we were going to do it, it had to be a little bit playful and ridiculous. So when we saw the first sketch, we were laughing in the room, and we were smiling. There was a palpable energy.”
To promote the sleeve, Blank Street shot a campaign in New York with Ella Snyder, in which the model is using the puff sleeve to insulate her matcha. “There is actually nothing more ordinarily beautiful and ritualistic than going to a coffee shop and getting a coffee,” says Rabaa. “But at the same time, we want to kind of showcase this in a way that kind of builds a world. It’s the idea that the sleeve gives you It-girl energy, and you become this kind of main character that’s larger than life wearing her puffer jacket.”
If you look at the scores of photos and videos featuring Blank Street across socials, you might assume the brand is targeting Gen Z. “I think people think we have some master plan with Gen Z, like there’s a cheat code that we hacked. But it’s really not the case — we are just doing things that we feel will have emotional resonance,” says Rabaa. It helps that Blank Street has a young team, who are “not too much older than them”, he adds; with the LFW partnership and more broadly, it’s about creating things the team would enjoy. “There’s this feeling of fun and youthfulness and energy to the brand that I think is really resonating across many generations.”
Sales on the puffer sleeve and plenty of social sharing will be a marker of success for the activation. But Rabaa is confident the Blank Street fandom will get on board. Brand loyalists have even started analyzing social media for Easter eggs, just like Swifties. “If we have a typo in an Instagram caption, someone might say, ‘Could this mean that strawberry shortcake matcha is coming back?’” he says. “People are really reading into every decision we make. So with something like this, I am hoping our super fans are gagged for this project. It’s a limited run, so I’m excited to see how it goes. But I think the Blank Street girls have our backs.”
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