Everyone is Trying to be Sexy, So No One is Anymore

You know when you repeat a word so many times that it starts to lose its meaning? I couldn’t help but wonder… Life, much like fashion, has become watched, scheduled, and optimised to the point where it feels as though no one is really having fun anymore. And with that, identity has blurred into a loop of online personas that coexist, overlap, and dilute each other between camera lenses and curated Instagram feeds.

Everyone is trying to be cool, chic, and sexy, but what most people don’t realise is that the moment sexiness becomes aware of being watched, it stops being sexy at all, much like an overused word that stops making sense. In 2026, not even Carrie’s naked dress would cause much of a stir. We’ve seen everything endlessly and repeatedly, and in that overexposure, we’ve grown tired of it.

Real sexiness now feels almost rare, like an aphrodisiac that is increasingly hard to come by. It’s not a specific look, but an energy, a kind of strange, unbothered charisma. The columnist Verona Farrel captures this idea in her series Things People Do That I Find Really Rock and Roll, where she points to the small, almost incidental behaviours that make someone actually cool, chic, or sexy: “people that have the ability to laugh when they fuck up,” “the light packers,” “the people that are callers, not texters,” or “going commando.”

The problem is that we’re addicted to the rush that kind of energy creates, so we keep looking for it everywhere. That might explain why fashion constantly circles back to the ’70s, the ’80s, or the ’90s - not just because the silhouettes were great, but because of what those decades represent: a lack of virtual self-consciousness in a time before everything was documented, and before identity became content. Back then, rebellion wasn’t something you performed for an audience - it simply happened. In the ’90s, grunge emerged in a context where being chaotic, anti-norm, and unapologetically real was instinctive rather than strategic. Marc Jacobs didn’t worry about being fired from Perry Ellis after his Spring 1993 show, and looking back at it, what stands out is not the clothes, but the absence of calculation—something almost impossible to replicate today, and very rock and roll, as the real-life Carrie Bradshaw (Verona) would say.

Today, even rebellion is curated - but only because it has to be. Algorithms reward what’s recognisable, and identities are shaped into categories that can be easily understood and consumed. Think about the “clean girl” or “cottagecore” aesthetic, for instance.

Which is why so many current attempts at sexiness feel like the opposite of rock and roll: overly performative, and therefore not sexy at all. The new Gucci under Demna slightly misses the mark for this reason. What people wanted was a feeling close to the Tom Ford era, but in trying to recreate that exact energy, the result comes across as exaggerated, almost as if it’s trying too hard to convince us.

And it’s not just fashion. Not long ago, Sydney Sweeney leaned so heavily into sex appeal that she ended up advertising soap made from her own bathwater, marketed “for the dirty boys.” Instead of reading as bold and playful, it landed as slightly uncomfortable and even cringeworthy, at least as perceived by audiences.

Sexiness seems to be slipping away from all aspects of our lives, including cinema. What is often

referred to as “Netflix lighting”- an ultra-crisp, almost too-perfect style of photography, has stripped many series of their atmosphere. That might partly explain why people are obsessed with American Love Story, whose imperfect, textured, and warm image feels less controlled and, in turn, more seductive.

The same logic applies to the so-called “CBK aesthetic.” Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy remains an icon precisely because her appeal felt effortless and personal, yet attempts to replicate her style reduce it to something hollow, because what made it compelling in the first place was that it wasn’t trying to be anything.

Basing trends on something so inherently personal only highlights a broader issue: identity is being diluted into an aesthetics war, where even our attempts at authenticity are constructed.

The shift from extremely curated Instagram feeds to “messy photo dumps” promised something more real, yet in reality, these posts are often just as edited; if not more. Effortlessness has become its own kind of performance, meaning that everyone acts as if their latest post was casual, when in reality, curating it and coming up with a cool caption was the most important task of the day.

So when the “party girl” or “messy chic” aesthetic comes back—or when a trend like the one Verona Farrel points to begins to emerge - it reads almost like a reaction. As the “clean girl” loses its grip, the reappearance of smudged eyeliner, undone hair, and a certain kind of excess, as seen on recent runways such as Prada, Saint Laurent, and even some Gucci, introduces a sense of looseness that feels, at least visually, more alive, and therefore, more sexy.

Because ultimately, the sexiest person in the room is always the one having the most fun.