In the 2000s, the former Hollywood agent Scott Sternberg’s Los Angeles clothing brand Band of Outsiders was the peak of hipster fashion. It sold quirky oxford shirts, skinny chinos, and skinnier ties by capitalizing on an image of exclusivity—it was for Kirsten Dunst, probably not you. The brand flamed out around 2015, passing into the hands of its Belgian investors. Last month, Sternberg launched a new, very different project called Entireworld. It’s an e-commerce company, avoiding the overhead costs that helped sink Band of Outsiders, and, as its name suggests, it’s supposed to be for everyone. Entireworld markets an androgynous-leaning set of bright pastel t-shirts, striped socks, and $95 monochromatic button-downs on a website that resembles an early Apple ad, down to the stiff serif logo.

Entireworld aspires to a vague utopianism, as if it could clothe the planet in a woker version of American Apparel. Sternberg told GQ that his inspirations included the Case Study Houses, a series of modular glass-and-steel homes in California by mid-century figures like architect Richard Neutra and the Eameses, as well as Brasilia, the white, curvilinear capital of Brazil that was the vision of Oscar Niemeyer. Sternberg’s leap from exclusivity to universality makes more sense when compared to the clothing brands that have emerged out of San Francisco and Silicon Valley over the past few years, funded by technology venture capital. Companies like the omnipresent sneaker-maker Allbirds and the minimalist wardrobe-provider Everlane have created a template, both aesthetic and economic, that is now leaking back into highbrow fashion.

These companies aren’t out to nail trends, as the fast fashion manufacturers of past decades did, but rather to sell an all-encompassing clothing system through which consumers are meant to live. In tech terms, the brands are platforms and the products must be scalable, aimed at as wide and profitable an audience as possible, whether those products are fabric sneakers or ethically manufactured underwear. It’s clothing as software, embracing an ethos of one-for-all uniformity.

In the past year both Allbirds and Everlane have opened new storefront locations in downtown Manhattan, moving into brick-and-mortar for the sake of public visibility as well as accessibility—despite the convenience of shopping online, people still like to try stuff on before spending money. I visited them both to see if what was for everyone was actually for me.

The gray felt, gray rubber sole, and ropy gray laces of the classic Allbirds sneaker have already become synonymous with start-up entrepreneurs; The New York Times pinpointed them last year as a way to “fit in” in Silicon Valley. Launched in 2016, the sneakers are unisex, washable, and wearable without socks, an advantage for the efficiency-minded (or washer-less). Fittingly, the New York Allbirds outlet is set up like an Apple store’s Genius Bar, with a long, curved, blonde-wood counter extending down most of the space across from wall-mounted displays of shoes. The wall is studded with succulents and covered in a cartoon cityscape.