In the dead of February at New York Fashion Week, everyone was messy, sexy, and ready to party—on and off the runways. I went into fashion week with sunglasses on, slipping into an Uber at Newark with my fashion-mag editor bestie, thinking, this is a work trip . . . and I can’t fucking wait to party. 

This desire isn’t unique. In these uncertain, trying times, it seems like everyone is craving an escape. 

And with the resurgence of the Y2K, indie sleaze era trending, we’re hungering for a specific sort of party—and party girl. We’ve turned away from the girlboss, put-together clean girl, with her taut slick-back and glossy lips. 

We’re bringing back the icons who lived for the night and looked like they just woke up at 3pm: Kate Moss, Cat Marnell. Today, the quintessential It Girl is messy, with smudged makeup and crumpled hair. She’s chain smoking cigarettes with no phone in sight, dancing through the night. I saw glimpses of her on and off the runway, and in my own pursuit of the party, I embodied her in my own right. 

BEAUTY MESS 

At NYFW, models were made to only look like they’d been up all night partying. Armed with a black Americano and a boring granola bar, I headed straight from the airport to the Frederick Anderson show uptown, where models walked the runway with teased, Amy Winehouse-esque beehives, their thick black eyeliner smudged at the edges. 

The dishevelled beauty trend continued at Collina Strada, where models had matted, knotted hair teased high—and at Bronx and Bonco, where MAC Cosmetics makeup artists created an “intentionally deconstructed” 90s supermodel look that highlighted dewy skin and haphazardly applied eyeshadow.

Designer Rachel Scott sent models down the runway for Proenza Schouler in shades of romantic disarray—smudged red lipstick, made to look like they’d just come up for air from a long makeout, evoking Scott’s vision of a messy modern woman. She told Vogue that Proenza Schouler’s designs deconstructed the “clean girl,” perfect vision of womanhood: “There was this glass between you and this woman that you’d see, and she was impeccable. She was super perfect. And that idea of perfection is a little bit scary for me.”

For that rolled-out-of-bed sleepy girl look, Sandy Liang’s makeup artist Romy Soleimani added a touch of soft red around the runway models’ eyelids for a slightly vampiric, bleary-eyed effect. 

Midway through fashion week, I wished that I had a professional makeup artist to cover up my undereye bags and make me look intentionally messy in a chic, sexy way. Running on four hours of sleep with many martinis seeping through my pores, I wasn’t feeling particularly glamorous. As Addison Rae said, I needed a cigarette to make me feel better.

CHAINSMOKERS 

Cigarettes, much like partying, never went out of style—but when our 90s smoking icons like Gwyneth Paltrow started to quit cold-turkey (because health and anti-aging), and Gen Z swapped cigs for Tamagotchi-esque vapes, the trend faded out of the cultural limelight. Celebrities hid their smoking habits from the cameras, and there was an air of shame around the whole ritual. 

Now, however, we’re unabashedly taking long, filthy drags again and posting about it. Blame brat summer. Blame the economy. Blame Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (Sarah Pidgeon’s version). Blame Carrie Bradshaw! 

Cigarettes have long been the hottest accessory for cool girls running around town, crushing butts under their spiky heels.

At the Kim Shui show, on a boat off Pier 17 that attendees (like Love Island star Leah Kateb) trepidatiously shuffled onto in their kitten heels, models held unlit cigs between their fingers with swagger as they strutted the jostling runway. With the models’ cat-like long nails and vixen, Valley of the Dolls bad-girl housewife glamour, Shui’s sexy looks felt complete with cigarettes in hand. 

The Kim Shui show solidified that smoking is back in vogue. Today, cigarettes are seen as chic accessories—on runways, and in photo dumps on Instagram (the IG account @cigfluencers, which posts aesthetic pics of celebrities smoking, has 100k followers). A cigarette, as a piece of iconography, harkens back to an era of vintage glamour, à la Vivienne Westwood and Chanel. As such, smoking is a portal to a highly coveted (and slightly fetishized) past.

LET ICONS BE ICONS 

Over fashion week, I found myself thinking about the death of cool. Today, it feels like everything sexy and cool has already been done before: like Britney Spears’s iconic 2002 Versace butterfly dress being worn by Blake Lively promoting a bad movie, or Kim K wearing Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday Mr. President” dress to the Met Gala etc, etc. The replications that attempt to grasp on to the authentic magnetism of the originals fall flat and feel so depressing. 

In the internet age, we’re hungry for true cool in culture: for icons who aren’t TikTok stars, for the taste of a cigarette on our tongues, to dance all night at the after party without posting about it. 

For originality and interesting friction and the freedom that comes with inhibition—the luxury of losing track of time and surrendering to the world around you. 

“People have been dying to see a fun girl have fun,” Summer Dirx said, about her viral walk for the “7 For All Mankind” show. Dirx strutted the runway in a slinky, “messy 2000s hot girl” look (as Vogue dubbed it), her every step punctuated with a bratty attitude reminiscent of Gossip Girl indie sleaze icon Jenny Humphrey. 

Icons with attitude have always been cool. Carolyn Bessette, Carrie Bradshaw, and all of the legendary girls who kept the party alive and could be fantastically, glamorously bitchy. It’s in what they wore and who they made out with (and the lipstick that smudged off when they did). Dirx’s viral walk reflects this: punching the runway with her heels, she was wholly self-assured, without a shred of self-consciousness behind her black sunglasses. 

After a day packed with shows, my friends and I ran into the It Girl of the Gen Z generation, Sofia Coppola’s popstar daughter Romy Mars, in the bathroom at Balthazar. Mars is an example of a Gen Z cool girl who is cool because she posts messy, Y2K-themed content. Being messy is the closest we can get to the she-just-has-It originality, inherent to the 90s cool girls who kept the party alive. There’s a genuine approach to glamour that’s essential to the messy cool girl—whether it’s curated (smoky eyeshadow) or natural (bedhead). Physical appearance aside, there’s an air of unfiltered authenticity to the bitchy, confident glamazons we adore and that Mars, in her oft-sardonic TikToks, taps into. At fashion week, the messy modern woman reigned supreme, and was seen both on and off the runway: Summer Dirx and her signature romp, and Romy Mars, looking bored and beautiful sitting at the bar.

Later that night, after we guzzled down our martinis at Balthazar, we slunk over to the Mercer hotel for a private, no-phones party in the basement, hosted by designer Emily Dawn Long. She ushered us in wearing a torn baby tee I recognized from a visit to her LES studio earlier that day, emblazoned with “NOBODY DANCES ANYMORE” in chunky red text across the front. We rode the elevator down to the basement, our phones securely stowed away in our bags as we beelined for the dance floor. We entered while EsDeeKid played through the low-ceilinged, red-lit brick bar. It felt like the whole room was in on the same secret: that we weren’t there to “catch up or chat or network,” as Long posted on her Instagram, but to dance.   

I left fashion week contemplating the revival of the messy woman. In all her haphazard, self-assured glory, she’s the antidote to the death of cool. She doesn’t look perfect, because when you sweat through your tube top dancing in damp basement bars and kiss in corners with hands running through your hair, you end the night looking like a fabulous mess. Work hard, play hard is the messy woman’s motto—and sometimes, she looks a little haggard. So she just needs a cigarette, to make her feel better.