It’s no secret that Sex and the City’s Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) has always been a menswear icon. There were the minimal monochrome suits and thin ties of earlier seasons (think: Saint Laurent and Celine). The slicked back hair and silver stud earrings. The turtlenecks and big-shouldered trench coats and tailored trousers. The tiny shades. The boxy neutral blazers that screamed ‘highly driven lawyer in a male-dominated environment.’ Miranda’s looks, more than anybody on that show, were an example of how to nail power dressing, of dressing in such a way that forced people to sit up and take you seriously.
But while Miranda’s practical yet chic influence has always been a talking point, it feels like now, more than ever, we’re actually seeing that influence play out on the ground. Look around you, on the streets of New York or London, and in 2024, literally everyone dresses like Miranda Hobbes. We’re seeing ties—some thin, but mainly those wide, patterned ’90s-style ones—make a comeback (no joke: you can clock people wearing ties in the club). We’re seeing corpcore—oversized blazers, striped shirts, preppy sweater vests—dominate office dressing and parties. And everyone’s dressing masculine now—not just the guys. The Miranda effect is in full swing. Turns out, we all wanna look like lawyers.
When Sex and the City first came out, in the ’90s and 2000s, Miranda was easily the most misunderstand character of them all. People thought she was brittle, a little cut and dry, just not as fun as the Steves or Samanthas of the show. Now though, what with Sex and the City being uploaded to Netflix in the US and introducing a whole new generation to the fictional dating lives of these 30 and 40-something professionals, Miranda has undergone a period of cultural reconsideration. Her brittleness was actually just boundaries. Her attitude was… fair enough! And her style? Forget Big’s serious suits or Aiden’s endless casual denim. It was Miranda that made that show a menswear mood board.
Of course, it’s not just Sex and the City that has everyone dressing macho and corporate these days. Post-pandemic and WFH, we’ve seen a swing back to more formal menswear as opposed to the hoodies and comfy sweatpants that dominated the early 2020s. That—combined with a more general move away from fast fashion and towards more ethical options, like thrift shopping—has seen whole swathes of people emerging from the underground looking like Patrick Bateman—all big-fits and Wall Street-style power suits.
Miranda Hobbes has always been the most stylish of the Sex and the City characters (lest we forget her most famous off-duty look: that time she cosplayed a queer-coded hypebeast in dungarees, a giant puffer jacket, and baseball cap). But never has she felt more present, more of the moment, more contemporaneous and current, than the summer of 2024. Okay yeah, time for a rewatch.
This story originally appeared on British GQ with the title ‘Now menswear is feeling the Miranda Hobbes renaissance’
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