From the time I invented it in 1988 until its mad popularity here naturally waned, maybe three to five years later, she certainly would, like anyone here on the scene, have crossed it many times,” he tells me. “Candace Bushnell was a pretty permanent fixture at places like Elaine’s in New York during the ’90s, and so would have been exposed to the drink in its initial flair of fame here in New York City. It’s unclear how the cosmo ended up on SATC a decade after it initially hit New York’s bars, but Cecchini has an idea. Since then, Cecchini adds, its popularity has wavered, but it’s never stopped symbolizing a night out with the girls. Cecchini swapped in Absolut Citron vodka, fresh lime juice, Cointreau (an orange-flavored liqueur), and Ocean Spray cranberry juice, and the drink took the city by storm.
The cosmo as we know it is his improved version of a mixed drink that was popular in San Francisco gay bars at the time, originally calling for rail vodka, Rose’s lime juice, and grenadine. “Good drinks wax and wane over time, sometimes goosed by current media, as with the old-fashioned after Mad Men came out,” says Toby Cecchini, who originally concocted the cosmopolitan while working at TriBeCa hot spot The Odeon in 1988, 10 years before the first episode of Sex and the City aired. But if you ask its creator, the cosmo never quite left. The same can be said for the show’s mascot: the cosmopolitan, a neoclassic New York City drink in the throes of a resurgence alongside its four most iconic drinkers.
Love it or hate it, Sex and the City is an undeniable fixture of the late ’90s and early aughts, and its 2021 revival-and reception thereof-a testament to the power of nostalgia for that era.