And Just Like That, Everyone Was Drinking Cosmos Again At New York Fashion Week

This season, it felt like everyone was ordering cosmos at New York Fashion Week’s Fall 2024 parties and dinners. They were a highly popular specialty cocktail at Rosetta and Violet Getty's joint party at Casino, and a tried-and-tested favorite of Harper’s Bazaar senior social editor Faith Brown. “I can never just start with a martini — I need something a little sweet first to ease in,” she says. “They’re fun and flirty, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a bit like Carrie Bradshaw. But I also feel a lot like my mother — which is even better.” Brown says she didn’t go out much this NYFW, but when she did, she drank cosmos. She even successfully persuaded her entire table at the Getty’s dinner to order a round.

Accent PR_ojects founder Gabrielle Katz, meanwhile, used to avoid ordering cosmos precisely because of its Sex In The City associations. But when a friend got her one to cheer her up, “honestly, it’s fabulous,” she says. And at Fashion Week parties “where you’re a bit suspicious the bartender will have the time to nail your usual order, the cosmo is perfect,” she adds. Or you could even DIY your own, like Abhi Janamanchi, brand director of the New York-based brand le PÈRE, says he once observed at a party he threw. This season, Janamanchi says he also spotted cosmos everywhere, though it “seems an unlikely drink of choice during a particularly unforgiving winter.” (He chalks it up to the release of And Just Like That jogging people’s memories of Carrie and company’s preferred cocktail.)

But maybe it’s precisely the drink’s summery appearance that’s lending to its trendiness. “If enough people start drinking pink drinks, you have the fajita effect where everyone starts asking, ‘What’s that?’” says Channing Centeno, lead bartender at Bonnie's and creator of the MSG martini. Centeno says he’s been tracking the cosmo’s steady comeback over the last four years, as triple sec brands have pushed to make the drink come back in vogue with “lots of incentives and competitions,” he says. (And marketing — take Aubrey Plaza telling us to “keep it cosmo” in Cointreau’s 2023 holiday campaign.)

If enough people start drinking pink drinks, you have the fajita effect where everyone starts asking, ‘What’s that?’

Centeno points to the sparkling cosmo at Night Moves as a good, updated take on the classic drink, but judging by how the fashion crowd stuck with the classic version this Fashion Week, we might take it as a sign of renewed hometown pride. Industry insiders and influencers have been declaring NYFW dead for years, saying that it’s impossible for new, exciting designers to “make it” in the city anymore and that TikTok has ruined the afterparties. But this season, Coach bowed to America’s style capital with apple-, Empire State Building-, and “I Love NY” bag charms paired with Yankees caps. And the cosmo, which was invented at The Odeon in 1988, was written onto the menus of notable dinners and parties and ordered in droves — all of which suggests that there’s a spirit of ownership (and maybe defiance). We’re still here — and we’re ready to party.