Today’s issue is brought to you by DREST, the addictive new game that lets you play stylist. Work your way through styling challenges like creating a photo shoot for Chloé’s new collection or dressing someone for Paris Fashion Week. It’s easy to judge lewks as part of the online peanut gallery, but once I got going I experienced a renewed appreciation for styling — DOES this hair go with that dress?! Which shoes make the most sense on a beach? Download DREST here and see for yourself.
Loose Threads
Well, Dior finally announced Maria Grazia Chiuri’s departure after her resort show in Rome, which was lovely. For some reason, LVMH hasn’t announced that Jonathan Anderson is taking over, even though everyone knows. (I’ll have more on this next week.)
Hailey Bieber’s Rhode is being sold to E.l.f. cosmetics in a $1 billion deal, including, Rachel Strugatz reports at Puck, “$800 million at closing (a combination of cash and stock) with a potential earnout of $200 million based on Rhode’s performance over the next three years.”
The Devil Wears Prada sequel has a release date of May 1, 2026, though no cast members have been confirmed. Stanley Tucci told Variety, “I know they’re working on it. If it happens, I would be so happy, but I cannot give you any information. Otherwise, I’ll go to the actor’s prison or something.”
Lauren Sànchez and Jeff Bezos have reportedly booked the five luxury hotels on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore along with “every water taxi in Venice” for their wedding taking place the weekend of June 24. Activist group Laboratorio Occupato Morion is planning protests beginning Friday, stating, “There's no room for oligarchs, their private parties and their dirty money.”
If you want some new ideas for how to wear a button-down shirt, the eminently stylish Christene Barberich has some tips!
And now, let’s get through the return of And Just Like That together.
'And Just Like That' Season 3, Episode 1 Recap: Carrie's Cry for Help
And Just Like That’s war on sweatpants as ready-to-wear continued Thursday night with the show’s third season premiere. Readers: three seasons! It feels like 18. Yet, it’s impossible to look away when Carrie is there on Max HBO Max, walking down the street with a hat as obvious as a parade float, as she compromises the full potential of her love life for the sake of one highly unappealing man.
I’m wondering if others agree (and please chime in with your thoughts in comments) that the first episode was less cringe than seasons one and two? Maybe cutting Che really did have that much of an impact. It would seem to defy the laws of television physics that Rosie O’Donnell, cameo-ing as a nun-tourist in a Wicked T-shirt, was somehow less annoying, and looked — at the risk of making another nun joke — like kind of a saint next to Aidan.
Let the character-by-character recap commence.
Carrie
Carrie has it pretty good this season. She dresses for day in a sheer Simone Rocha gown and parka stuffed with flowers. The effect is lovely if a bit tumor-y (but this bulbous stuff is trending right now, and who is Carrie Bradshaw to ignore an awkward trend?). What was she doing in this, after she mailed Aidan a vintage postcard with nothing written on it, because he doesn’t want to communicate with her for five long years? Surely something banal, like going to pick up cat litter. She lives in a new two-story place that is, by average New York standards, the Jeff Bezos’s yacht of apartments (if it were tasteful). And she hasn’t opened her laptop in weeks because she’s too busy picking out fabric for a chaise, which is on back-order, she says, kind of like her relationship. And her cat, Shoe, is both the cutest and likes to be snuggled on its back in her arms, laying there like a clawless, toothless stuffed animal. So much is just so good, here — the new clothes, the new place, the new kitten, the not having to work. Plus, Miranda lives nearby in the West Village, able to easily pop over to rescue Carrie after she slips and falls.
Carrie’s big problem is Aidan, who gets drunk in his truck in a field in Virginia one night and calls her for phone sex, which was arguably more cringe than any scene ever with Che. Aidan talks about shitting his pants, and it’s just so, so bad that Carrie fakes it.
I have to assume that Carrie’s fashion is now a cry for help. Her clothes start out serene, in the beige Rocha, and then take a wild turn. She goes to the ballet wearing a huge, lifeless neck bow that just HANGS there like the misery she can’t escape.
The hat she trots out for a walk in the park with Seema makes her look like one of the mushrooms from Mario Bros. The black-and-white polka-dot blouse she pairs with distressed pink pants seem to signal an identity crisis. She can’t decide if she’s going to make like Aidan and sand some furniture, or like Charlotte, whose personality is 75 percent shirt dresses, 25 percent pet owner.
By the end of the episode, Carrie realizes one thing: she has to do more writing than Anthony’s young and energetic boyfriend, and penning Aidan’s “Handsome Pond Lane” street address onto a postcard that’s emptier than Lily Goldenblatt’s Shein box is not enough. She leaves us with the sentence, “The woman wondered what she had gotten herself into.”
The woman could very well be referring to her clothes.
Seema
Seema’s attitude toward Ravi is the foil to Carrie’s toward Aidan. When we left them at the end of season two, he was going off to Egypt to make a film, promising her that they could still be together. Seema is giving the relationship her all, including wearing full-on lingerie for a video dates instead of just, say, sweats and a Zoom bra. But Ravi sends his assistant to the Zoom date, even though he hadn’t spoken to Seema in a week, and Seema ends up lighting a cigarette and drifting off, torching both the bed and some of her hair.
The nice thing about Seema as a character is that she is unwilling to excuse Ravi for not making her his priority. You could easily imagine lots of women in New York putting up with Ravi’s bullshit because he is a fancy, rich film director, who wears nice suits and pulls off those jaunty little neck scarves. And when he arrives in New York, he seems like he might be okay as a boyfriend! He brings Seema what looks like a $500 bouquet, he says “I only see you” as delivery men are in the room setting up her new mattress, and he notices that her hair is shorter — all things I’m pretty sure Aidan would be incapable of.
The next day, Ravi tells her he’s planned a lunch date at Jean-Georges, he just has to do something for work first. Probably thinking that means sending an email or making a call, Seema puts on her finest — a cross between a beach cover-up and evening wear that appears to be made of leather braids. Once she finds out her outfit has to be squeezed into a van with Ravi’s production crew so he can go location-scout for the perfect annihilated pier, she’s back to being disgusted with him. She learns he has a “no perfume in the van” rule that she’s unwittingly violated. They miss their reservation for lunch and then dinner. And one of his minions subjects her to Sprite and chips. Having wasted her look on sitting in Ravi’s van with people who indulge his enormous ego and eat sandwiches from a cooler, she decides that they are done.
LTW
Not only is LTW’s husband Herbert symbolically suffocating as an alleged human being, he is also physically suffocating as a bedmate. Unable to sleep as he drapes his body over hers, LTW gets out of bed to make coffee and start working. She’s stressed about the documentary series she’s making about unsung women in history, and has an important meeting about it with PBS. She puts on an odd dress that looks like a Midjourney creation, and accessorizes with a necklace made from what look like the decorative balls you’d find in a large bowl on a dining room table at a Florida VRBO.
Her next major look is a dress that probably costs $20,000, which the costume department made sure to cheap up with a big red waist belt. (That said, the feathery yellow shoes were a nice touch.) The dress was lovely on her!
Charlotte
The drama in Charlotte’s life this episode revolves around her dog, Richard Burton, and the ridiculous things she wears to walk him. While her teen daughter is busy ogling a sexy, 20-year-old ballet dancer in nude tights — prompting Uncle Anthony to tell his boyfriend, “It’s ballet, not Grindr” (good work, writers!) — Charlotte is presumably polishing her waist belts or picking out her dog-walking lewks. Early in the episode, she and LTW look like they are on their way to an eighties workout-themed costume party.
Later, she walks her dog wearing kitten heels, because no one on this show is ever allowed to be comfortable — even if the task at hand involves picking poop up off the ground — unless the outfit looks like a Halloween costume.
The whole “Charlotte cares more about her dog than her kids” storyline felt like a departure from previous seasons, where all Charlotte cared about was her kids. Maybe this is a New Charlotte, giving herself to more to her career and dog instead of her family. We know she’s checked out from her home life when her daughter Lily is shamed by sibling Rock for shopping at Shein. I just can’t imagine Charlotte being fine with Lily wearing Shein when she buys her kids Oscar de la Renta and carries her poop bags in a tiny satchel from Burberry. No, this is a Charlotte whose mind is elsewhere.
Miranda
Miranda’s clothes were shockingly… normal. If you told me everything she wore came from J. Crew and LOFT, I would believe you. Who could forget when the costume designers dressed her in that amazing purple-and-yellow ombré coat by Oscar de la Renta last season? Maybe that was her quotient of fabulosity for the duration of this program, because in the season premiere the craziest thing she wore was a brown plaid trench over a waist belt. (This show is Valhalla for waist belts: why?)
Perhaps her clothes symbolize how, after a chaotic Che-filled couple of seasons, Miranda’s life has settled. She’s no longer couch-surfing, she’s eased into her second career, and she’s the one in control of her romantic relationships. If she wants to have a one-night stand with a virgin nun after a few phony Negronis, she can without it ruining her life. (Plus five to the writers for Carrie’s line, “I don’t know which is worse, that you slept with a nun or a tourist.”)
Once again, her attitude is a notable contrast to Aidan’s peculiar hold on Carrie. Even in the middle of Times Square in the Wicked shirt, holding the sad bag of M&Ms, Rosie O’Donnell was still somehow not as tragic as Aidan jerking off in a truck in a field with a six-pack.
What Paid Subscribers Are Reading
Is this series really that popular? Are we looking just to see pretty fashions, the lives of these women who have more disposable income, or is it a critique of a place, time, and human interactions and its unrealistic view? I really don’t understand why someone would dress is a tutu at age 50+. What I would like to see, if it’s just a fashion show, is innovative fashions older women can wear without looking like they are trying to be young. Mixing old with new.
As we get older our bodies change, our individual style morphs into what we are noticed for, fun jewelry, a scarf, comfortable jeans, loafers! Right now there seems to be a lack of reading the room, understanding the economics of every day people, and alternative voices. I look at the AA community and see far more interesting clothes, the mashing together of patterns, the ability to have a moment when you gasp at the beauty and thought they have thrown together. Real kicker it is both men and women secure in who they are and a voice of confidence that I don’t see elsewhere in fashion.
Such a weird time in so many respects.
I'll have to read the rest of the comments/recap in a sec, but one thing that bugged me about the Mary storyline, apart from Carrie and Miranda being huge snobs (they always were) was that Rosie's character had no edge. I kept waiting for the catch: Mary was lying about being a virgin like in The Wedding Crashers, she was actually a huge beeyotch, but...nope. So C&M spent the whole episode making fun of a perfectly lovely woman who just wanted to experience New York for the first time.
That's an issue with this show I've noticed: there's no serration, no real stakes. The writing refuses to give real problems to these absurdly rich women.