Fashion has a funny way of cycling through itself. What’s cringe today becomes coveted tomorrow, and what gets buried under the weight of overexposure has a habit of clawing its way back, usually through the back door of a major cultural moment. Right now, that moment might just be The Devil Wears Prada 2, and the unlikely vehicle driving the conversation is B. J. Novak’s deliberately disastrous wardrobe. Whether the film intends it as a joke or not, gorpcore is back in the frame, and this time, it’s walking straight into the lion’s den of high fashion.
Before getting into the film itself, it’s worth acknowledging something: gorpcore never really disappeared. It just got loud, then embarrassing, then quiet again. And in that quiet, the pieces that defined it—technical shells, functional pullovers, weather-ready outerwear—kept doing what they were always designed to do. The trend died. The jackets didn’t.
What Is Gorpcore, and Why Did We Turn on It?
For those who need a quick refresher, gorpcore is the aesthetic that took outdoor performance gear and pulled it into everyday streetwear. Arc’teryx shells, Salomon trail runners, Patagonia fleeces, zip-up everything. For a few solid years, it was genuinely one of the sharpest things happening in menswear: practical, understated, and built around function over flash.
Then it became a costume. People were dressing head-to-toe in technical mountain gear to pick up a matcha outside a coffee shop that opened three weeks ago. The gear was real; the lifestyle was performative. Once that gap became impossible to ignore, the backlash arrived quickly, and gorpcore was filed under “over.”
Enter B.J. Novak, Worst-Dressed Man in Runway History
This is where The Devil Wears Prada 2 comes in. B. J. Novak plays Jay Ravitz, the nepo-baby son of media tycoon Irv Ravitz, who storms into Runway magazine with Silicon Valley energy and absolutely zero interest in fashion. He is, by his own admission, the “worst-dressed character in the history of the Devil Wears Prada universe,” and he wears that title with a level of commitment you almost have to respect.
Jay’s wardrobe is intentionally jarring: synthetic fabrics, tech vests, cheap materials, and an overall aesthetic that feels like gorpcore stripped of any cool and left in a server room. Stanley Tucci’s character quips that if a match were struck near Jay, he’d “go up in flames,” which is both a burn and a fairly accurate critique of excessive petroleum-based layering.
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What BJ Novak’s Character Gets Wrong (On Purpose)
Here’s the thing: the film positions Jay’s wardrobe as a punchline—a visual shorthand for everything that’s wrong with Silicon Valley’s efficiency-obsessed, culture-flattening worldview. But in doing so, it places gorpcore-adjacent clothing front and center in one of the most fashion-conscious film franchises of the past two decades.
And that kind of visibility cuts both ways.
Cultural moments like this have a history of rehabilitating what they’re supposedly mocking. When something gets laughed at in a prestige setting, people start looking at it differently, sometimes with fresh eyes.
The Trend May Be Uncool Now, But the Functionality Remains
The smarter read is to separate the trend from the clothing. Gorpcore as an aesthetic movement, the identity, the performance, the signaling, is probably done. But the garments themselves? That’s a different conversation. Brands like Arc’teryx, The North Face, Columbia, Berghaus, and Napapijri have been producing technically sound outerwear for decades. None of that engineering stopped being useful because a few people on TikTok overdid it.
An Arc’teryx Gamma jacket is still lightweight, breathable, and built for real weather. A Columbia full-zip still handles rain better than most pieces you’d reach for on a gray morning. A Napapijri pullover still solves half your daily carry with that oversized front pocket. None of that becomes less true because gorpcore peaked and crashed.
What We Think
B. J. Novak wearing synthetic vests and tech-bro layers as the comic villain of a high-fashion sequel is, on one level, fashion’s way of laughing at gorpcore one more time. But it’s also placing those clothes in a conversation that extends far beyond the usual menswear crowd. And historically, that tends to move the needle.
Gorpcore as a trend had its moment, made its mistakes, and took its lumps. The jackets, though? They were always just doing a job. Worn without the performance, without the full kit, without the need to look like you’re summiting something, they remain some of the most practical, versatile pieces in a rotation.
That’s not a trend. That’s just good clothing. And good clothing has a way of outlasting whatever name gets attached to it.
Featured image: 20th Century Studios
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