Last modified on Mon 25 Jan 2021 15.22 EST
Pretend It’s a City is not a fun watch. It should be. A Netflix docuseries about the writer and Manhattan socialite Fran Lebowitz complaining about New York? The definition of fun. Yet, watching Lebowitz wander around pre-pandemic Manhattan in a giant overcoat and taupe scarf, scowling at the city in all its mask-free, lattice-shaped grandeur, it is hard to stop thinking about how painful an experience it is now that the city – and Lebowitz within it – is out of reach.
Lebowitz is not a fashion icon, but she is a style icon. Embodying the sort of intellectual New York world she covered in her 70s column for Andy Warhol’s magazine Interview, she might find the idea amusing. But we will never know, because she will never read this, since she doesn’t have a phone, or a computer. Her only Tweet, posted over a decade ago, reads drily: “thank you for following me you people are uber sweet”.