In this season of And Just Like That, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her former love Aidan Shaw (John Corbett) strut down a New York City street. While Aidan has regrown his signature wavy hair, he has a polish to him that comes with age, and he’s wearing a Barbour jacket just so slightly unzipped to reveal a black crewneck shirt. There’s not much to the look; a Barbour jacket is a widespread casual status symbol. I see the waxed jackets all the time in the city, worn in the same exact way! Aidan could be any man on the New York City street.
I like the old Aidan, the rustic Aidan. The new and improved Aidan feels awkward, like he’s a man playing dress up when in actuality he looks like he smells like a shard of bark and should be wearing a sweaty T-shirt. I love the original Aidan with his retro flared-out locks and Caribbean blue denim shirts. He resembled Buddy in Midnight Cowboy if Buddy, like, washed his socks and actually had a solid skill set.
After all, Aidan is a hulking man who was ripped from an old Eddie Bauer catalog to magically end up in Carrie’s West Village apartment, stripping her floors. In Sex and the City, he is a kind man in New York who is unjaded by the city. That’s a New York unicorn. As Mr. Big once so crudely put it, “Where’s Paul Bunyan?”—but only if Paul Bunyan layered necklaces and dark-wash blue jeans. What’s wrong with that?
It’s easy to write Aidan off as having no style. After all, he’s compared to the highly stylized Mr. Big, who is perpetually in a suit and a very tightly fastened tie. But Aidan’s jeans-and-T-shirts uniform fits him so well because he actually wears his clothes and works in them—with his hands. He’s sanding, sawing, and living in those T-shirts. He’s fading his jeans himself because he’s wearing them to death.
But Aidan ultimately knows quality. Remember that little suede jacket he wears when we meet him? It’s visibly great quality, the color of teak wood ripped straight from an aged Tectona grandis tree. (Note: He wears the same jacket for his return in season four.) It immediately elevates any denim-and-T-shirt look he is wearing. Aidan knows quality fabric; his job is to upholster.
Upstate Fabio also has a certain flair that trickles into his accessories. The most obvious is his love for his turquoise jewelry. (Charlotte uses this against him in a cutting dig when Carrie considers getting back together with him.) His hands are full of gumball-size rings while his neck is swinging with leather twine necklaces. It’s a tender form of self-expression.
Aidan’s multiple transformations later on in Sex and the City are upsetting, at least to me. Here is the man who has forsaken his funky leaf-print button-ups with fat collars for cigars. He’s gone Samson and Delilah with his boring short hair and, yes, left his man jewelry behind.
When Aidan reappears in season four, Carrie misses him and immediately notes how great he looks while Samantha exclaims, “He just needed to get rid of the turquoise rings and that tummy!” Another gal pal refers to him as “low-fat granola.” And it’s true: Aidan did become low-fat granola. His spirit and style were diluted and jaded by Carrie’s cheating. He lost a lot of charm as he became more and more city-fied. There is a glimmer of hope, though. When Aidan and Carrie reunite in season four, he throws rocks outside her window. While tossing pebbles, he’s wearing that same delicious, stellar woody suede jacket with a white shirt embroidered with florals (though he has short hair). It’s the most tender possible version of his later self—and a reminder of why he looked so great to begin with.