Back in the day, Gossip Girl was gold. It introduced a generation of Bright Young Things to a cast of Rotten Bad Things, depicting the carnage and catfights caused by an entitled bunch of Upper East Side brats (and even a couple in Brooklyn – so edgy!) For in their world, money is power, and headbands are crowns. In the rear view mirror, those lessons aren't quite as attractive as they once were in a pre-crash 2007. Gossip Girl mark one has lost a little of its shine.
It's up to a reboot, then, to polish up with a second attempt that's set to be released next year. Looks kind of promising, actually! The cast is more diverse (a huge, welcome contrast to the lily white central six of Gossip Girl 1.0). Several plot lines will probably be written out (Chuck Bass, the two attempted rapes, and the quick application of the finest Farrow & Ball to gloss over it all). And we'll see a new generation that aren't all cookie-cutter aspiring Ivy Leaguers with a penchant for papa's Ralph Lauren blazer and really quite ugly dickie bows. There's a glint of streetwear to the reboot – and not just the permissible, innocuous stuff that's saturated the high street. There's streetwear of the trippy strain, like LA collective Brain Dead, and then there's the throwback, grunge-heavy skate fits that nods to the New Yorkers that came before, like the Kids of Harmony Korine: a cult classic that depicts another side of the city, one that is realer, and grittier, and thus cooler in its authenticity. It's all there in Evan Mock's puffer jacket.
Pictured on-set in Manhattan, the candy-topped skater-turned Louis Vuitton model-turned influencer-turned actor proved that he may well be the best (or at least the most current) of the next Gossip Girl crop. It's balls to the walls menswear. It's a middle finger to the dusty, conservative codes of school uniform. It's being part of the prestigious world of privatised academia, but not wholly toeing its party line of polo shirts and dad slacks (which are still very much pervasive in these places some 13 years after Gossip Girl's initial debut). This isn't the sort of puffer jacket for a dog walk; it's a puffer jacket deliberately designed to showboat in a patchwork of colours that scorch. Nate Archibald could never.
Granted, luxury streetwear is still a privilege, and skate culture isn't on the margins like it once was. Gossip Girl is still a tale of privilege – and likelier still one of teenagers that consider socialising a bloodsport. But the second wave is proof that menswear – and the men within that menswear – aren't just one homogenous blob of Hamptons-based Chad. We're seeing different things emerge, like nuts puffer jackets and bleached buzzcuts, even on the hallowed steps of the New York Met. Now that we can take a shine to.
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