This weekend, less than a block away from Polo Ralph Lauren’s Soho store, a gaggle of shoppers waited hours to buy from a brand that offers a decidedly more Gen-Z take on Americana.
They were lined up to get their hands on sweats, hats and fleeces from Dairy Boy, the apparel and homewares label founded by the influencer Paige Lorenze. Friday through Sunday, the brand hosted its third New York City pop-up in as many years, its biggest yet.
Dairy Boy is one of several brands operated by Gen-Z influencers that have built rabid fanbases with a streetwear-style business model centred around selling branded sweatshirts in frenzied drops. Lorenze’s spin on the genre is to add a generous dollop of world building to the usual logo-ed merchandise promoted by a social media-savvy founder.
Lorenze, who grew up between Connecticut and Vermont and now resides in the former, centres her label around an idyllic New England lifestyle. On TikTok, Instagram and in weekly 45-minute YouTube vlogs, she rides horses through open fields, cooks with farm stand produce and tends to her garden. The clothes she sells are reflective of that world, from barn jackets to overalls to roll-neck sweaters embroidered with a fish or an apple.
A New England setting has long been an effective marketing tool for brands like Ralph Lauren and L.L. Bean. It’s an aesthetic that many brands, from J.Crew to Tommy Hilfiger, have adopted in hopes of emulating Ralph Lauren’s approach to building a brand identity that transcends categories — and leads to financial success. Lorenze, however, is taking it a step further: In February, she hired Madeline Pesavento, a Ralph Lauren and LoveShackFancy veteran, as the brand’s first design director, and tapped filmmaker RJ Bruni, who has worked with Ralph Lauren and Rimowa, to direct several of its latest campaigns.
“Ralph Lauren does Americana fashion, but we’re for that younger shopper that is making their first big purchase, but it’s still $75,” said Lorenze, referring to the price tag of her in-demand fleeces.
The pop-up was meant to bring her vision to life: The two-level space was transformed to look like the inside of a Connecticut farmhouse. The front was a mudroom, complete with Persian rugs, hanging barn jackets and fleece pullovers, with Lorenze’s own saddles positioned at the front. Downstairs, a life-size dollhouse held a bed featuring Dairy Boy sub-brand American Charm’s bedding. Next to it, small booths covered in colourful awnings — a nod to the brand’s farm stand in Weston, Conn. — displayed pyjamas. Outside, wooden crates full of produce sat beneath a window, while young women in overalls handed shoppers soft-serve cones from a branded ice cream truck and a white picket fence barricade corrals still-waiting fans.
“She’s authentically herself,” said Sydney Weaver, 21, who planned a trip to New York from Los Angeles specifically with visiting the pop-up in mind. “Her lifestyle on the East Coast is so different from mine on the West Coast. It’s very captivating.”
It certainly seemed to resonate: By the end of the weekend, the brand had sold through nearly 9,500 units of product and surpassed its internal single-day sales record. Sales at this year’s pop-up, which are projected to account for 3.5 percent of total 2025 revenue, increased 160 percent from last year.
Dairy Boy Grows Up
The timing of the pop-up coincides with the debut of the brand’s first permanent collection, a milestone moment for a label that’s become known for its blink-and-you-miss-it drops. Though Lorenze appreciates the fact that they can sell “20,000 fish sweaters in two weeks,” it’s also brought challenges. The brand, which has raised no outside funding, regularly sells out of its most popular products, which in turn can prevent casual shoppers from shopping. With what it’s calling the “Evergreen” collection, she wants new customers to be “able to discover this brand in passing” in order to grow their audience beyond its most devoted fans.
“I don’t want people to feel like they have to have this fight or flight reaction in their shopping,” she said. (Still, there was an element of that mentality at the pop-up, which attracted a two-block-long line that began at 6 a.m., five hours before it opened its doors.)
It’s also part of the company’s maturation. This year, Lorenze has expanded not only the full-time Dairy Boy team but also its roster of creative partners in hopes of upping the caliber of its marketing. In addition to Ralph Lauren alum Pesavento, Max Stern joined as its chief executive in May.
That gives her more time to focus on the brand’s creative, a major priority. Now 27, Lorenze said her innate decisiveness and her years as a content creator — she started when she was just 19 years old — has allowed her to develop her taste and sharpen her eye. That vision, she said, has helped her attract higher-profile collaborators like Bruni.
“I’m really focusing on pouring my money into photographers and videographers that can bring my vision to life,” she said. “As a creative director of a brand, you can have a really clear vision, but if you don’t have the right people around you you don’t have much.”
Lorenze wants to continue to find new ways for customers to experience Dairy Boy offline, even if they’re not rooted in moving product. Earlier this month, she partnered with Viv’s Veggies, a local business in Weston, Conn., to revive one of the area’s farm stands as The Farm Stand by Dairy Boy. It sells flowers, vegetables and later this year, will add pumpkins and Christmas trees — but so far, no Dairy Boy products. In June, she hosted the first Dairy Boy Polo Classic at the Greenwich Polo Club.
A permanent store, Lorenze said, is the next step, and though all three of the brand’s pop-ups have taken place in New York, she feels that it’s not the right spot for its first long-standing shop. She’d prefer somewhere like Nantucket, the ritzy vacation destination off the coast of Cape Cod, because it “feels really aligned with the storytelling.” Not only did the brand drop a Nantucket-inspired collection earlier this summer, Lorenze herself got engaged on the island last month.
It’s all in service of getting people to buy into the fantasy.
“She curates a dream life,” said shopper Gaby Bellard, 26, who has attended all three of Dairy Boy’s pop-ups. “Especially for people that live in the city, you see it and say, ‘I want that.’”