To close out the year, GQ is revisiting the most fascinating ideas, trends, people, and projects of 2023. For all of our year-end coverage, click here.
When looking back on the year that was, it’s easy to identify the bold-faced names who dominated the discourse—like Jacob Elordi, who inhabited Elvis and made us believe in eyebrow piercings again, or Kim Kardashian, who expanded her Skims empire while also starring on a hit season of American Horror Story. But there’s another class of individuals worth celebrating this time of year: the understated aspirational figures who help usher in subcultural shifts and define what success looks like at this exact moment. In 2023, Jenna Lyons was one of those people.
Lyons, for the uninitiated, is the former president and creative director of J.Crew. Back in the mid-2010s, she set the standard for American fashion for an entire generation of women, styling then-First Lady Michelle Obama in her most relatable looks while turning out mall brand staples that struck a perfect balance between corporate professional and art-school weirdo. After resigning her post at the iconic retailer in 2017, however, she largely stayed out of the spotlight, leaving many to wonder if and when she might make a triumphant return to fashion.
Needless to say, when it was announced late last year that Lyons would be joining the revamped cast of The Real Housewives of New York City, it came as no small surprise. It felt like an awkward fit—how would a tasteful, no-nonsense fashion icon coexist with TV’s thirstiest drama queens? As she explained on the Shut Up Evan podcast, when Housewives czar Andy Cohen first approached Lyons about a potential role, she texted him back: “I’m actually not a housewife, I am Jenna Lyons.” In the end, that’s exactly what wound up endearing her to viewers and made her a breath of fresh air on a long-stale franchise.
The new RHONY was designed to carve out a new type of housewife. The six new cast members don’t come from outrageous wealth—they all have careers. And yet, among them, only Lyons truly breaks the Housewives mold. During this year’s RHONY reunion episode, for instance, every other castmate dressed in a standard-issue sparkling gown. Lyons, meanwhile, showed up in denim jeans—the Bravo equivalent of wearing sweats to a royal wedding.
Lyons’ prior accomplishments and notoriety also put her in stark contrast to the rest of the cast. Where the other housewives are practically begging for tabloid coverage as a means to promote their various side hustles, Lyons complains openly in one scene about being seen as Page Six fodder. (Though, to be fair, Lyons herself does admit she only joined the case to promote her fake lashes brand LoveSeen.) She doesn’t need the show to be successful the way her castmates do—and the life she curates using that success looks wildly different from theirs, too.
Most seasons of Real Housewives feel like the product of AI— all surgically smoothed skin, glossy frictionless mansions, and sparkling champagne thrown across tables. They take on the sheen of something totally surreal. Lyons, on the other hand, is nothing if not totally real: she is guided by her own good taste and unafraid to express that taste openly.
That reared its head most notably on an episode of RHONY where the ladies decamp to the Hamptons. As her fellow cast members bumble about and argue in an anodyne mansion, Lyons steals away to her artsy, relatively small pad in Amagansett. It may not have infinite guest rooms, but it has something none of the other Housewives possess: a look and feel that is distinctly, unmistakably Lyon’s own. It’s a quality that seeps into every one of Lyons’s spaces and outfits. “As a real estate agent, I have to say, it’s a very sexy apartment,” fellow housewife Erin Lichy says of Lyons’ Manhattan home in one episode, before completely missing the point: “It’s not really useful to any other type of person except for Jenna Lyons. I mean, who are you selling it to?”
Those dismissals of the other housewives’ carefully manufactured style led to the few instances in which Lyons got dragged into the show’s central drama. Leaving the Hamptons mansion freaks the other women out. They can’t believe she would leave without saying goodbye…and she missed their morning workout? A cardinal housewife sin. And in Lyons’s most memorable scene of the season, she explains to fellow housewife Jessel Taank that it's gauche to mash a Balenciaga and Alexander Wang logo together into a single outfit. “Jenna Lyons just called me a fashion victim!” Taank exclaims while huffing off.
These are the moments that make Lyons such a fascinating character in 2023. As Housewives ratings have cratered in recent years, the franchise is turning to people like Lyons to revamp its image. She is something much rarer than a mere rich person: She is self-made, has an authentic point of view, and remains delightfully offbeat on a show where everyone else is trying desperately to fit in. Lyons emanates glamor in the truest sense—and all of us, Housewives fans or not, could learn a thing or two from the way she carries herself.
After her first season of the show wrapped, Lyons and her girlfriend, the photographer Cass Bird, attended an Australian wellness clinic and then flew to Corfu to board an unnamed benefactor’s yacht for a journey through the Greek islands. Any other housewife would’ve vied to include a trip that extravagant on the show itself—yet another chance to flaunt their wealth on national television. But for Lyons, it was the ultimate aspirational luxury: a chance to truly get away.
