Pour Yourself a Hot Chocolate and Enjoy Our Top 42 Stories From 2019

2019 was a wild year, full of black holes, record-breaking flips, and many viral tweets, but as we near the curtain call for both 2019 and the whole goddamn decade, all we are left with are our stories. I’m constantly proud of the things the team makes here—whether it be a perfectly crafted vanilla-buttercream-icing-on-top headline, photos so good they make me want to print them out and physically mail them to everyone in my non-existent address book, or an essay that keeps me up three nights in a row—so I was thrilled when tasked with pulling together our most loved stories of 2019. Behold, the result of a year of styling, photographing, asking, listening, and writing: May you enjoy being reminded of them—or reading them for the first time—just as much as we loved making them for you.

Best of Style
Photo by Sabrina Santiago.Uniqlo coat, Tory Burch tote, J.Crew turtleneck, Missoma gold and silver necklaces

The Ones That Caused a Stir in the Man Repeller Office

Fall Style Win: Collarless Coats and Big-Ass Totes

“No Horizontal Stripes” and Other Plus-Size Cliches Worth Breaking

The One Where—More Than Ever—We Came for the Clothes and Stayed for the Feelings

I Took 30 Days of Mirror Selfies and Processed a Lot of Feelings

The Ones That Made Getting Ready for Something (Anything) Feel Fun

I Recreated 5 Gucci Runway Looks With My Own Wardrobe

5 Babydoll Dresses That Are Aggressively Cute

3 Couples Style Each Other Using the Same Fall Closet

3 Easy-Peasy Spring Makeup Looks

Fake Freckles Are Trending, Much to My Delight

For the rare bird who has not seen Cruel Intentions, I invite you to review this Wikipedia rendering of the character I’m emulating from the movie (the original!). The TL;DR is that she ruins people’s lives for fun and more often than not uses sacricities such as sex and religion to do it. Not to beat you over the head with the obvious but that’s why I’m wearing an at-first-glance modest dress that actually exposes all my shit.

—Leandra Medine Cohen, I Asked Instagram Commenters to Dress Me for a Week and of Course It Got Weird

The Ones That Made Us Question Ourselves, Our Homes, the Entire Universe

Theory: All Good Outfits Go Bad at 3 p.m.

Wardrobe Makeover: Maybe the Secret to Closet Organization Is Actually Optimization

Is Black the New Millennial Pink? I’m Only Kind of Kidding

The One Where We Accidentally Took the Perfect MR Family Photo

How to Get Big, Fun Hair, No Matter What You’re Working With

Best of People
Photo by Olivia Wein.

The Ones That Set the Team Slack Channel—and Entire Office—Ablaze

There Are Two Kinds of People in This World: “Sorry” People and “Thank You” People

Unpopular Opinion: Eggs Fucking Suck

Man Repeller’s Mail Guy Is So Cool We Can’t Even Think of a Headline

Once You Look Into a “True Mirror,” You’ll Never Be the Same

If my hands were ever finally set free from the rest of my body, as I know is their only wish, they would take the city by storm. They’d be on the board at Alvin Ailey. They’d discover new artists and quietly support them, not wanting to become a topic of discussion in the art scene themselves. They’d go to different tea shops for different types of loose leaf teas. They’d own and play a Djembe in a drumming circle in a park. They’d have a secret beach. They’d look good in hats.

—Nora Taylor, Look at My Beautiful Fucking Hands

The One That Almost Made Us Want to Go Back to School—Just for the Fashion

12 (Very Cool) NYC Teens Explain Their Back-to-School Outfits

The Ones We’ve All Read Way More Than Once

How Friendship Changes With Age, According to 3 Older Women

“Don’t Take Dating So Seriously”: Relationship Advice From 3 Older Women

Ask MR: I’m Scared I’ll Never Make New Adult Friends

Peak Maturity Is Accepting That You’re a Cliché

Our culture pathologizes success. We pay people to photoshop our kids’ heads onto the bodies of athletes to get them into better colleges; we life-hack our way through meticulously-calligraphed bullet journals. I’m sure this has always been true, to some degree — no epics were written about “that 467th foot soldier who stepped on a scorpion and died on the way to Troy” — but social media has compounded our obsession for perfection. Insta filters contour our cheekbones and plump our lips; 30-under-30 lists pump narratives of geniuses we are always two steps behind. There’s the endless gray ocean of all of us, and then there’s the cream that rises to the top. That cream has 12 million Instagram followers, and you can’t get the red wine stain out of your white jeans.

—Meghan Nesmith, The Radical Act of Embracing Your Own Mediocrit

The One That Never Stopped Getting Traffic

How You Should Define Success, According to Your Sign

The Ones That We Hope Opened Some Eyeballs a Little Wider

My Bad Acid Trip Taught Me Everything and Nothing

The Best Sex Ed I Ever Got Was From Queer YouTubers

Men Share Their Abortion Stories: “That Kid Would Be 33 Now”

Best of Culture
Photo by Andy Jackson.Staud dress and by Far shoes with Anastasia Beverly Hills Norvina Palette, Pat McGrath Mothership III Eyeshadow Palette, Fenty Killawatt Highlighter in Wattabrat, Fenty Lipstick in Candy Venom and Poutsicle, Anastasia Beverly Hills Glitter Lip Topper in Blazing Sunset

The One We All Wish We’d Read Over a Slice of Quince Tart

How Bon Appétit Became a YouTube Sensation—and Why Claire Saffitz Is the Perfect Star

The Ones That Proved There Is No One Way to Celebrate a Celebrity Worth Celebrating

I Dressed Like Pete Davidson for a Week, and I’ll Never Be the Same

Aidy Bryant Is You, But Famous

From Homelessness to Hollywood: Trans Star Ava Grey on Her Journey

Timothée Chalamet is a sight for sore eyes, and also any kind of eyes. Remarkably photogenic, Chalamet’s appeal begins with the perfect symmetry of his heart-shaped face: he doesn’t have to engage or contort a single facial muscle in order to look good in a picture. He boasts the stature of a Toblerone bar (which I’ve heard he buys from local Nolita bodegas when he’s in town), a jawline rendered by it’s rumored—Bernini’s own chisel, carbon copies of Brooke Shields’ eyebrows and the great mess of his Timothée Chalamet Hair. A Google search reveals that he is 5′ 10″, but like a whisk you buy on Amazon, it is difficult to fully envision his scale relative to you. (Do actors generously round up their heights like college athletes do? Who measured Timothée Chalamet for his IMDB page stats?) More than just a pretty face, he’s articulate and conversational enough to be a talk show host. He’s Gen Z’s answer to Michael Cera. —Edith Young, I Know You Love Timothée Chalamet, But I Love Him More

The Ones That Almost Everyone Shared With at Least One Friend

The Modern Trap of Turning Hobbies Into Hustles

If You Haven’t Heard of “Hopepunk,” Allow Me to Gently Introduce You

Would You “Renegotiate” Your Relationship Every Year?

The Ones That Proved Animals With Always Provide the Best Fodder for Content

Special Social Media Report: Last Week’s Startling Disappearance of @Round.Boys

Couples Therapy for Pets: A Real Thing I Actually Recommend

Feature Photo by Sabrina Santiago.

Cover Photo by Edith Young.

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