‘The Great Gatsby’ Turns 100 Today.

THE TRAFFIC LIGHT turns green on a crowded jag of downtown Manhattan. Polished women shake their choppy, chopped hair in the wind, scanning news of soaring stocks, then crashing stocks, then a wild party their friends tried to crash. Stores show drop-waist dresses and long beaded cardigans in one window, piles of crisp white shirts and boater shoes in another.

Anew type of car zooms through the streets, looking both goofy and menacing at once. Cheap whiskey pumps through expensive bars, a bid to flush out the rumblings of foreign wars and homeland corruption. A freshly printed copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has just arrived at the New York Public Library. The whole thing could be a mis en scene from the 1920s, except, wait—it’s 2025, a hundred years after Gatsby first debuted.

“It’s remarkable how many similarities exist between the 1920s and today,” Deirdre Clemente told me. A fashion historian and professor at the University of Las Vegas who specializes in Fitzgerald’s life and influence, Clemente served as a consultant on Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, guiding designer Catherine Martin through the uniquely American codes of preppy linen pants, swishy silk skirts, and slip-on loafers that defined both the moneyed American youth of 1924 and the Miu Miu runway models of 2024.

“You read diaries from designers and manufacturers of that period. They sound like newspaper stories from now. They’re saying, ‘Trends are happening so fast. Young people are building their identity through what they buy. We can’t keep up.’”

The story was compelling, but it didn’t hit the mainstream until World War II, when American army troops were sent crates full of Gatsby copies to read on the warpath. G.I.s recognized themselves in the book’s plucky and lost heroes; their wives and girlfriends clocked the unspoken conflict between female independence and social stability. The fact that every chapter has some kind of party, and many kinds of booze, also helped.

By the 1970s, The Great Gatsby was a near-universal part of the American high school curriculum; its characters became shorthand for the uniquely American struggle between personal freedom and class-bound fate. In 1974, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow played the doomed lovers Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in a film by Francis Ford Coppola that reignited America’s love of preppy sportswear, and gave Ralph Lauren his first major film credit—the designer made all the movie menswear, including Redford’s famous pastel pink suit, which has become a staple of the line.

The Art Deco tapestries seen in Gatsby’s “great white palace” appeared on designs from Ossie Clarke and Celia Birtwell; the iconic ‘70s Biba logo was an Art Deco motif, too. Bob Mackie referenced the bare-limbed, beaded hypnotism of 1920s follies performers with his show-stopping outfit for Cher, later resurrected by Kendall Jenner on the Met Gala red carpet.

Glimmers of Gatsby style kept bobbing through the 1990s and early 2000s, thanks in large part to Miuccia Prada, whose graphic knitwear and curve-seamed handbags took inspiration directly from the industrial innovations of the 1920s. In one of Britney Spears’s most famous photo shoots, with photographer Ellen Von Unwerth in 2003, she was styled like a flapper in Armani. Anna Sui cited Daisy Buchanan as an influence in her 1999 collection. You could also peep Daisy in the drop-waist floral skirts and Mary Jane heels at Marc Jacobs circa 2003, right around the time the brand released its Daisy perfume. (You can still buy copies of Gatsby on the Marc Jacobs website.)

“One of the most interesting for collectors is Stella McCartney at Chloé,” said Kate Young, the celebrity stylist whose vintage finds appear on clients like Scarlett Johansson and Michelle Williams. At a recent event for the luxury resale hub Vestiaire Collective, she noted the way past decades fuel present shopping hauls, in part because of pop culture staples like Gatsby. “Think of those easy, drop-waist dresses like Stella did,” Kate explained, “With the intricate beading and the loose evening jacket. No corset, no tightness. The dress isn’t the only commodity. You are, too.”

By the time Baz Luhrmann resurrected Gatsby’s lurid fable in 2013, fashion was fully on board. Ralph Lauren and Joseph Altuzarra released runway homages before the movie; Prada paired with costume designer Catherine Martin on dresses for Carey Mulligan and pants for Elizabeth Debicki, who played Jordan Baker. “You’ll hate it because I made the skirts too short and the heels too tall,” Martin said to Clemente during their final design meeting. “I just want to make it really clear these people are having sex!”

12 years later, Gatsby seems poised to crash the fashion party again. 1920s deco motifs abound at Printemps, the new Manhattan outpost of the storied French department store, which is decorated with the same swirly opulence of a Follies Bergière dressing room. Fendi has made a drop-waist beaded flapper frock for its Spring 2025 ad campaign; starlet and TikTok darling Sarah Hyland has stepped into the Daisy Buchanan role in the Broadway musical. But today, the girlish glamour of the doomed heroine is no longer the main artery for the book’s fashion inspiration.

“Jordan Baker is really emerging as the style icon of the story now,” Clemente told me. “She wears loose, wide-legged pants with camisoles and makes her own money. Gen Z would much rather embody her.” They can do it with Proenza Schouler’s spring 2025 collection, which deftly toes the line between the long, loose trousers perfected by Coco Chanel in the 1920s and the fringe-forward dresses seen on speakeasy dance floors. Aritzia’s oversized Effortless Pant does the job, too.

Millennial women, meanwhile, seem to be shifting their style allegiance away from Gatsby’s women altogether. “Sometimes it’s more fun to embrace that classic men’s shirting,” said Pip Durrell, the founder of the button-up mothership With Nothing Underneath. On a recent trip to New York from her native London, Durrell took over a suite at Nine Orchard, the hotel that was once a 1920s bank. Like Gatsby himself, Durrell “took out a pile of shirts… shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell.” In the book, Daisy begins to cry when she sees Gatsby’s “beautiful shirts.” In the Lower East Side of Manhattan, fashion editors didn’t mist up, but they certainly snatched up a poplin Oxford or a starched white tuxedo top for themselves. For Nick Carraway’s more lived-in ease—and dare we say it, his “quiet luxury” vibes—consider designers like Kallmeyer and Toteme that harness the boyish charm of old-school college basics, with a twist.

But wait. Why are we still clamoring to dress like Daisy, Jordan, Gatsby, and Nick—a group of rich kids equally buoyed and bored by their privilege and deluded into thinking the world will go their way? “The Great Gatsby is wild that way,” admits Clemente. “Daisy doesn’t choose Jay. She goes back to Tom, who never faces the consequences for his actions. The rich white guy wins. It’s brutal. But, you know, Nick and Jordan are doing things a little differently. The world is doing things a little differently. There’s an optimism that things will change.”

That green light Nick sees, but can’t quite reach, is often linked to money or love. But perhaps it’s actually change, and the hope that someday, true ease will exist not just in the shape of a dress or the softness of a cotton shirt, but in all of our lives. “We want to dress like Gatsby because we believe in that American optimism,” Clemente says. “It’s not always realistic. But to us, it feels real.”

This article originally appeared on Harper’s BAZAAR US.