It’s no secret that Intercourse and the Metropolis’s Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) has at all times been a menswear icon. There have been the minimal monochrome fits and skinny ties of earlier seasons (suppose: Saint Laurent and Celine). The slicked again hair and silver stud earrings. The turtlenecks and big-shouldered trench coats and tailor-made trousers. The tiny shades. The boxy impartial blazers that screamed ‘extremely pushed lawyer in a male-dominated setting.’ Miranda’s seems to be, greater than anyone on that present, have been an instance of the right way to nail energy dressing, of dressing in such a means that compelled individuals to take a seat up and take you critically.
However whereas Miranda’s sensible but stylish affect has at all times been a speaking level, it looks like now, greater than ever, we’re truly seeing that affect play out on the bottom. Go searching you, on the streets of New York or London, and in 2024, actually everybody clothes like Miranda Hobbes. We’re seeing ties—some skinny, however primarily these extensive, patterned ’90s-style ones—make a comeback (no joke: you possibly can clock individuals sporting ties within the membership). We’re seeing corpcore—outsized blazers, striped shirts, preppy sweater vests—dominate workplace dressing and events. And everybody’s dressing masculine now—not simply the fellows. The Miranda impact is in full swing. Seems, all of us wanna seem like attorneys.
When Intercourse and the Metropolis first got here out, within the ’90s and 2000s, Miranda was simply essentially the most misunderstand character of all of them. Individuals thought she was brittle, somewhat minimize and dry, simply not as enjoyable because the Steves or Samanthas of the present. Now although, what with Intercourse and the Metropolis being uploaded to Netflix within the US and introducing an entire new era to the fictional relationship lives of those 30 and 40-something professionals, Miranda has undergone a interval of cultural reconsideration. Her brittleness was truly simply boundaries. Her angle was… truthful sufficient! And her type? Overlook Huge’s severe fits or Aiden’s countless informal denim. It was Miranda that made that present a menswear temper board.
After all, it isn’t simply Intercourse and the Metropolis that has everybody dressing macho and company nowadays. Submit-pandemic and WFH, we have seen a swing again to extra formal menswear versus the hoodies and comfortable sweatpants that dominated the early 2020s. That—mixed with a extra common transfer away from quick trend and in direction of extra moral choices, like thrift buying—has seen complete swathes of individuals rising from the underground trying like Patrick Bateman—all big-fits and Wall Avenue-style energy fits.
Miranda Hobbes has at all times been essentially the most trendy of the Intercourse and the Metropolis characters (lest we neglect her most well-known off-duty look: that point she cosplayed a queer-coded hypebeast in dungarees, a large puffer jacket, and baseball cap). However by no means has she felt extra current, extra of the second, extra contemporaneous and present, than the summer season of 2024. Okay yeah, time for a rewatch.
This story initially appeared on British GQ with the title ‘Now menswear is feeling the Miranda Hobbes renaissance’
