Oooh, look at these beautiful pictures and read these beautiful words about Rama Duwaji. Then peruse the start of our four-part series of prognostications for the New Year. Finally, and perhaps relatedly, some bad news for Bari Weiss.
COOL PEOPLE
Rama Duwaji Is the New Queen of New York
In her first-ever profile, we learn what makes the mayor’s forever girlfriend tick.
Danya Issawi got to hang out with artist and illustrator Rama Duwaji, who has been thrust into the spotlight because she’s married to incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani. She has been a bit press shy up until now, which is understandable considering that even her admirers can’t seem to figure out a way to be normal about her online. They’re asking hairstylists for her signature bob, they’re scrutinizing her social media, and they’re calling her an “It” girl when she’s actually just a savvy, fun, interesting person who happens to be New York’s new First Lady. Danya got a peek at the influence Duwaji wielded behind the scenes of Mamdani’s campaign — tweaking his posters, coaching him in Arabic — as well as her own artistic practice and how it’s influenced by her politics.
Whether illustrations, animations, or ceramics, much of Duwaji’s artwork is informed by growing up in the diaspora and the summers she spent visiting her grandparents in Syria. Women with coarse curls, prominent noses, and defined eyebrows feature heavily in her drawings. “I just see a beautiful strong profile, and I’m like, I need to draw that woman.” Her portfolio is full of soft images of womanhood: a girl resting among tall blades of grass and flowers; another peeling a clementine in the shade of a tree; and two women, face-to-face, asking each other in Arabic, “How are you?” There are also weightier works depicting the war on Gaza and revolutionaries killed in Syria.
“Speaking out about Palestine, Syria, Sudan — all these things are really important to me,” she says. “I’m always keeping up to date with what’s going on, not just here but elsewhere. It feels fake to talk about anything else when that’s all that’s on my mind, all I want to put down on paper,” she says. “Everything is political; it’s the thing that I talk about with Z” — Duwaji’s nickname for her husband — “and my friends, the thing that I’m up to date with every morning, which is probably not great for my mental health. It’s what I talk about when I check on my family back home.”
Her fashion sense is also an extension of her artistic practice, she says, and in the gorgeous shoot accompanying this piece, Duwaji wore New York–based, POC-owned, and vintage brands. She loves thrifting so much she once had a Google Maps folder with more than 50 stores earmarked — truly a woman of the people!
BYE!
What’s OUT in 2026?
The Dinner Party hive mind has some thoughts.
Welcome to part one of a four-part series about what we predict 2026 will usher in and what we’re leaving behind — grudgingly or gladly — in 2025. I asked some of the most funny, clever, deranged people I work with to help me compile this list. On Monday, we’ll get into what’s IN, then go back to OUT, and so on. Without further ado, here’s the first tranche of what’s definitively (probably) OUT.
“Hot girls” do/eat/buy, etc.
Calling things “spiritually Israeli” or “spiritually Dubai” in lieu of a more precise critique
Dubai chocolate, obvs
Saying “We’re headed toward civil war” and/or expatriation fantasies
Unfortunately, liking Wicked is out and liking Rent is in
Fetishizing Wasp culture and the UES
The standard-issue straight-cut low-slung baggy jean
Mary-jane ballet flats
Salter House–style nightgowns/bloomers/undergarments as daywear
Streaming services in general
Dr. Becky
Self-diagnosing mental-health/behavioral disorders
Cowboy boots
And the phrase Boots
Looking like a muted gallerist
Wine-forward DJ nights
ChatGPT
Vaping
Mid-century modern
Gourmet Crunchwrap knockoffs
That little scarf tied over a skirt or pants
That’s just the first quarter! Stay tuned. And weigh in: dinnerparty@nymag.com
GOOD NEWS
Bari Weiss Is Not Good at Her Job
And other shocking revelations from the latest kerfuffle at CBS.
It was high-key pretty embarrassing for CBS and, uh, America, when Bari Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes segment about CECOT. Ross Barkan writes today about the wave of outrage that ensued, what it revealed, and what Weiss’s future at CBS may look like now.
There are many valid reasons to bemoan the fractured media landscape and the inability of reliable news organizations to reach Americans as they once did. Yet it’s easy, in the wake of Weiss’s strangling of 60 Minutes, to see an upside: Since corporate media is less powerful than it once was, it’s far harder for a strongman president like Trump to control the flow of information. The spiked segment spread across the internet anyway. Even if Trump, the Ellisons, and Weiss succeed in transforming CBS News into a network that is overly deferential to the White House, there will be many other competitor outlets, along with social media, to disseminate a counternarrative. And it’s not entirely clear CBS will go this way. Weiss and her boss may come to understand, as with Disney’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel, that capitulating to the president is a poor public-relations strategy. Disney, under fire, eventually brought Kimmel back, and now he has a new contract. The spiked 60 Minutes segment will probably air in the U.S. eventually. If, however, Weiss and Ellison continue to weaken a famed journalistic institution, they will find themselves with even less credibility and, likely, less money. Once trust with an audience is broken, it’s very difficult to get it back.
Come for the thoughtful media criticism, stay for the Schadenfreude.
Click Your Way Out
What were this year’s best viral foods?
A close reading of George Clooney’s career, seen through the lens of Jay Kelly.
And the Bucky Award goes to …
The Avatar whales are back, and now they have clothes.
Yes, you should spend $400 on heeled ballet flats.
You can never have too many Dustbusters, says Sally Jessy Raphael.
Kim France’s best-selling picks this year.
Pairing perfumes with holiday movies (like Carol and Eyes Wide Shut).
It’s time to talk about the emaciated celebrities.
See you on Monday! Also, see you at the cottage!
“Standard-issue straight-cut low-slung baggy jean” “Mary Jane ballet flats” - are these not simply normal (and chic?!) clothing items?
I’m predicting that you’re off my feed.