'And Just Like That' Season 2 Episode 1's Best Fashion Moments
Welcome to a fantasy world where guests can just show up to the Met Gala with a random plus-one at the last minute.
If And Just Like That’s writers were tackling the second season’s first episode today, trying to come up with a fabulous fashion-y thing for the fab four to do, they would not choose the Met Gala. They would send them to a celebrity’s debut fashion show, only instead of Pharrell for Louis Vuitton on the Pont Neuf it would be Carly Simon for Carolina Herrera in Central Park. The Pharrell show seems to have set a new bar for all other fashion events, which seem painfully quaint by comparison. And I’m not sure that this episode much helped the Gala on that front!
Back Row readers likely know at this point that the secondary plot line involving who is going to let number-one Met Gala fan Anthony be their plus-one is very much fiction. Like, Anna Wintour isn’t just handing out guest passes. (This is why in reality sometimes important people have to attend without their spouses #worldstiniestviolin.) She would sooner retire than let an Anthony skirt in at the eleventh hour as a plus-one, to say nothing of allowing Harry to show up in that top hat.
It’s also unclear why these women are going to the Met Gala. Like, maybe it would make sense for Lisa Todd Wexley (LTW) to go since she’s a filmmaker, but Carrie? For her… podcast?
That said, this show is all about suspending disbelief and just looking at clothes. So many clothes! Here are the best fashion moments from the first episode.
Carrie
The episode opens with the Britney Spears remix of “Tiny Dancer” playing to a montage of the women pre-coital, each with her own distinct lingerie (or, for Miranda, a pool cover-up). Ensuring she is the most distinct, Carrie emerges from her bathroom in an oversized white off-the-shoulder sweatshirt dress with The New York Times logo. Despite being at home, she’s also in heels, because this is a woman who never athliesures. Skims? She knows her as well as the inside of a Sam’s Club.
Carrie’s loungewear works harder than all the jewelry on this show combined. Her next at-home look — which she wears to call Che and Miranda when Miranda is trying to slip into a strap-on — is a beautiful oversized cardigan worn over a lace-trimmed slip. The average woman’s runway look is something Carrie Bradshaw wears for the benefit of no one.
Elsewhere in the episode we see her walk with Charlotte wearing a white maxi dress-resembling jumpsuit with high white patent leather heels and an askew wide-brimmed hat. She’s fit for a horse race or just spectating while Charlotte picks up her dog’s poop. She goes out to drinks with her podcast cohost Jackie, who makes a big deal out of being poorer than her, wearing the sort of novelty sequin fuchsia skirt and matching heels that you just throw on when you are rich enough to possess a Black Amex but not wealthy enough to own your own plane. And she podcasts wearing her dorkiest, dowdiest outfit, including a brown plaid blazer.
Carrie spends the most time this episode getting her dress fitted by Jackie’s up-and-coming designer girlfriend, who has to tailor it herself because two seamstresses had stomach flu. I’m not sure if the costume department intended for this dress to look like a Project Runway audition? But with the ribbons of blue wrapped around it and fluttering off the side like the tail of a piñata, it looked like it might not even pass Forever 21 quality control.
After great struggling to make it fit, the designer tells Carrie she can’t wear it because it will make her look bad. Carrie says, “I can’t just go to my closet and find a perfect dress to wear to something called Veiled Beauty.” Of course, less true words were never spoken, because Carrie Bradshaw of all people has a million beautiful things to wear to anything, veiled or otherwise. Because this show is all about scratching fans’ fashion itches, she opts for her Vivienne Westwood wedding dress, with the bird headpiece and a small netted veil. She throws the up-and-coming designer’s blue cape over top because she’s already committed to fashion public service. But honestly, she looks fabulous, and certainly serving a much better Gala look than, well, Charlotte.
Charlotte
Charlotte’s opening sexytime look is a plain black slip dress. It’s interesting that that’s how she shows up in the bedroom when she shows up everywhere else with sleeves that could have their own real estate listings. She arrives at Carrie’s apartment with a sketch of her Met Gala dress and her bulldog, Richard Burton. She walks RB while carrying a tiny Burberry plaid poop bag satchel. Succession’s logo print of the bourgeoisie — the kind who covet Met Gala tickets — is Charlotte York’s pride and joy. Later at dinner, we see Charlotte in a houndstooth pussybow blouse. If you thought there was something vulgar about the Burberry dog accessory, the houndstooth pussybow might make you reconsider.
That said, it was all leading up to a very important moment, which was Charlotte’s daughters working together to tighten her corset for the Met Gala. When Lily is unable to do it alone and Rock shows up, Charlotte asks for help. Rock “won’t be party to upholding the patriarchy,” but Charlotte, not about to let values stand in they way of her Cinderella moment, says, “Just for today, come help your sister.” Yet when she leaves the house, it’s not in the plain black dress we were expecting, but something that doesn’t give “veiled beauty” nearly as much as “circus MC.”
Harry
Seeing Harry in his weekday suit with the top hat he picked up for the Met Gala really makes you appreciate how refined so much of the suiting and, well, everything in Succession was. We are later subjected to Met Gala Harry complaining to his wife — wearing a corset, a hat, gloves, a train, a choker, and high platform shoes — about how his boots “pinch.” We are supposed to believe that he wants to go to this thing so he can brag about it at the office, where he fantasizes about brandishing a selfie with Rihanna (or, if you pronounce it like him, “ree-HAN-uh”). In his final outfit with the purple tie, he looks like a lost Gilded Age extra. Charlotte wisely convinces him to stay home so she can drag Anthony away from the live stream, which he watches with earnestness that is less believable than someone slipping an unapproved plus-one past Anna at the last minute.
Miranda
In Los Angeles shacking up with Che, Miranda’s sexytime look is a loudly striped pool cover-up, which she removes to skinny dip. She spends a lot of the episode naked or almost naked. She breaks out of the sensory deprivation tank fully nude like a fish flopping onto a boat deck (this was, truly, a great bit of physical comedy). She tries to attach the strap-on to her body with all the finesse of Che’s line about a “penis palooza.” When she shows up at Che’s comedy show, she wears a marble-y moto jacket, which feels like the kind of thing she would wear in L.A. after scrolling through Hailey Bieber’s Instagram for outfit inspo. My favorite look on her was the simple green slip she wears at the end to tell Che she loves her body no matter what idiot TV costume people say about it. It was a welcome contrast to her “Veiled Beauty” friends back in NYC.
Lisa Todd Wexley
We knew LTW was generally fabulous, but we did not know until this episode that she is so fabulous that she gets a custom Valentino gown and veil for the Met Gala, preceded by a fancy fitting involving toile and everything. She is Charlotte’s pouf sleeve sister, opening the episode in a fully pleated printed sleeve with massive gold beads around her neck and a fuchsia skirt (of course this show has two of them in one episode). I actually appreciated the commentary about her Valentino headpiece, involving red feathers extending from the front of her face like some sort of gravity-defying couture Koosh ball. Her annoyingly horny husband asks, “Can you see in that thing?” And she says, “Who needs to see?” And the dress looked just beautiful crossing Park Avenue, even with her dufus spouse holding the train.
Seema
Seema is as stealth wealth as anyone on this show is going to get, thanks to her fondness for earth tones, linen, and solids. That said, this is still the house that blue embellished Manolo Blahniks built, so her accessories work overtime, including gargantuan gold waist belts, coaster-sized rings, and clear Louis Vuitton logo-print handbag. She is supposed to be one of the best realtors in Manhattan — Tom Ford’s realtor! — yet her greatest concern this episode is whether she can squeeze in lunch with her nightclub owner French boyfriend and his son before she has to meet her “glam squad” to prepare for the Met Gala. “The man or the Met,” she declares at dinner. “Is the universe really that cruel?”
Ultimately, after lunch ends and French hottie suggests they go to Brooklyn for baklava, Seema is like, Ew, Brooklyn! And chooses the Met. She claims it’s because he lives with his ex-wife, but these women have the same likelihood of voluntarily opting out of the Met as The Idol does of actually becoming a good show. Her Met look, a bronze silk affair with fabric looping over her shoulders and head, was awkwardly bunchy and disappointing in the grand scheme of her fashion repertoire (not that she could ever look bad). But the dress wasn’t as disappointing as the massive rectangular pendant necklace that looked like an alarming way to wear an iPhone.
Nya
Nya, Miranda’s professor-turned-friend who probably doesn’t even know what the Met Gala is, may be the most human character on this show. She seems to have fewer cringe lines than the rest of them, but also doesn’t dress like a drunk woman treating the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room like a theme park (which is not, to be clear, a bad thing as much as a not-relatable thing).
Che
All the hate Che got last season only made me love them. Maybe you’re not there yet, and I get that; their joke about nobody walking in L.A. and taking an Uber from the bathroom to the bedroom was a lot. But you can’t argue that they made the right call rejecting that hideous blazer with the shiny blue lapels.
Finally, the Rest of the Men
Some men have charisma. These men have necklaces.
I’m a new subscriber and each post I read makes me think, “Where has she been all my life?!”
Fantastic. Thank you. This is why I subscribe.
(Have not seen show and probably never will...) 🥂🥂🥂🥂