'Emily in Paris,' Season 5: Pop-Tarts and Popped Hearts

And now today’s big story…

If you consider this show one that can be spoiled, beware the spoilers are coming at you fast.

Watching the fifth season of Emily in Paris is, as usual, an exercise in suspending disbelief, in making oneself a willful audience to the absurd.

Agence Grateau looking to expand with a second office in Rome, a city with just a handful of potential clients? Obviously.

Emily throwing herself lustfully at Pop-Tarts in the American embassy’s secret basement full of ultra-processed treasures from the USA? Believable enough.

Fascinators and gloves worn like earrings or other normie accessories? YOLO.

The entire Agence Grateau office still speaking English for the benefit of Emily, who cannot converse in French after what seems like years, even though time is as flimsy a concept on this show as work visas? Well, why not?

Emily not giving up her Paris marketing job and tiny, likely closet-less apartment to marry a hot, rich Italian, live in his native countryside in his childhood mansion, and spend her days Instagramming and digging for truffles? Okay, well, here I have to ask: Girl, what was the point of all that?!

Getting a sixth season, that’s what. I’ll be curious to see what the writers manage to do with more of Emily being in Paris / [insert picturesque European city here]. Did we go to Rome because they ran out of Eiffel Tower and baguette material? Maybe. Or maybe the Fendi and Intimissimi sponsorships were worth enough money to set half the season in Italy. Who cares? This show is good fluffy fun and I’m locked in for as long as they’ll drag it out, And Just Like That-style.

Ahead, a fashion-oriented, character-by-character recap of Season 5.

Emily

Emily has a new haircut, a new city, and a new man.

As usual, she spends the season juggling the romantic interests of various sundry hotties like she’s trying to decide which avocado to buy from Trader Joe’s. She continues her romance with Marcello Muratori, who rescued her from a ski slope last season, and lands business from his family’s brand, sort of a cartoonish version of Loro Piana.

While in Italy, she notably dresses repeatedly like she’s a piece of decorative porcelain.

Costume designer Marilyn Fitoussi told Vogue the Italian references were intentional, adding, “For once, she’s chosen love over work, so her clothes needed to reflect that.” Has she, though? She can’t help Marcello’s mom with the pasta without talking about work, she wears Intimissimi lingerie because she wants their business, and she ruins Solitano by hosting an influencer fragrance launch dinner there. There are as many boundaries between her personal life as there are between her print pairings. Speaking of prints, though, I did love the ’60s looks on her, which suited the mod hair nicely.

The funny thing about this show is that it’s so empty that the audience doesn’t seem to mind any of the sponcon. We live in a world where marketing is everywhere, perverting the experience of life, and we’re all just supposed to sit there and take it. (I went to see the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular in NYC for the first time last year, and there was a Chase ad in the middle of the show, and we all just looked at it like this was fine and normal when it was gauche and unseemly.) Unlike the uproar over the Estée Lauder serum placement in “Nobody Wants This”, “Emily in Paris” is the ideal canvas for commercials because it is as shallow as a baking sheet and has been doing brand integrations from the beginning.

Enter: Fendi. Emily carries all manner of designer handbags in this show and wears too many expensive things to count, yet stores her grandmother’s Fendi Baguette in a box like it’s the Hope Diamond. When she brings it to her pitch meeting and the Fendi gal tells her it’s fake, we all get a lesson in authentic Fendi bags. COUGH Buy Fendi’s $5,000 collaborative “Emily in Paris” Baguettes COUGH.

When Emily goes to visit Marcello’s family in Italy, she wears high platform heels to dig for truffles (his sisters think she’s just a gold digger, but she’ll show her). Her style seems to mature a bit this season. She wears numerous long jackets (the red look toward the end of the season I thought was quite winning), which come off as more grown-up than platforms and shorts. She still can’t shake her affinity for statement sleeves, like the striped ones she wears to flirt with Jake the American and drool over Lucky Charms at the embassy during the five minutes that she and Marcello are broken up and she may or may not be sad about it. Maybe she planned to use that blouse to sneak out some Gushers? After she rebuffs Jake, she reunites with Marcello wearing a gray 1995 John Galliano skirt suit similar to the one that Lauren Sánchez Bezos wore to Paris Fashion Week in October. See? She was on the trophy wife track.

They get back together, and Emily becomes Marcello’s emotional babysitter as he embarks on the creative torment of trying to be a fashion designer. During a period of confusion, when Gabriel swings through Paris after leaving to be a yacht chef to pick up forgotten knives, she gazes across the lunch table at his lightly frosted tips and tan. She wears all black, as though in mourning for their lost love.

But there’s no time for that, because she has to serve as an unpaid CMO and chief of staff for Marcello. She gets him a gorgeous atelier in Paris through Pierre Cadault, her maturity and capability in such matters telegraphed via a shirt dress.

When they go to Venice for his Venice Fashion Week show (lol) she wears even lookier looks because, as Fittoussi said, “It’s in the same tradition of when you arrive in a new place and want to look spectacular.” Because in this world, no one travels in soft pants carrying a backpack or vacations in anything other than red carpet clothes.

Emily makes the embarrassing mistake of thinking that Marcello was going to propose to her, then tells him she can’t uproot her life in Paris — where she has basically one friend and no closet and a marketing job — for Solitano. It seems like choosing being an editorial assistant at Condé Nast in 2026 over the opportunity to marry a wealthy European, live somewhere gorgeous, and never have to work again. But fine. We’re all locked in for Season 6, so pick the yacht chef with no charisma.

Mindy

Mindy may make even less sense as a character than Emily. What is her singing career? It seems to consist of a residency at the Crazy Horse and marketing events Emily books her for because those… so often include random cover singers? That’s what everyone wants when they’re going to a product launch event – for them to feel like weddings. She has to exist in the liminal space between total failure and middling success, because if she were a famous pop star, she would overshadow Emily and the way she slays brand activations. Mindy’s clothes are, as usual, even more outlandish than Emily’s, and, also as usual, I love their ridiculousness and opulence.

She gets a great fashion moment in a beaded blue minidress when she’s helping Emily launch that fictional coffee brand, entering via speed boat singing “Espresso.” Notably, this look doesn’t seem so different from much of what she usually wears, day or night.

Mindy’s storyline this season revolves around Alfie. They fall for each other over rosé, at first keeping their affair from Emily, even though it ultimately causes very little friction between them as friends in the grand scheme of things.

When they go horseback riding, Emily has to wear a boring tan suit, and Mindy wears a full cheetah-print one.

Another thing about Mindy: Whenever she can appear pantless, she does. It works for her. For instance, what is this little knit outfit?

It looks like a onesie for a very rich woman’s baby, but on her, on this show, it just makes sense.

At the Pride Parade, which features a single float (on which Mindy sings “It’s Raining Men,” because why would they choose something less obvious?), she wears a red wig with boots made of belts.

She gets back together with Nico, this show’s version of an Arnault nepo baby fashion type, even though Alfie tells her he’s a snake, and even though he now may not have enough money to pay rent, and even though he is investing what money he does have in Marcello’s fashion line. He may as well be spending it on sports betting on his phone. #TeamAlfie

Later, in perhaps a full-circle moment, Mindy wears a dress made of belts. I don’t know if this symbolizes anything other than, “Here’s something to look at other than your phone,” but you know what? Unlike that Chase ad at The Rockettes, it was fun to look at instead of my phone.

Sylvie

Sylvie had more to do than usual this season, from opening her Rome office to torturing herself over editing a totally generic fragrance commercial to inadvertently sleeping with her friend’s hot son. She’s the most pared-down woman on the show, fashion-wise. She rarely wears hats, her earrings are, I think, always symmetrical? And she loves a solid dress in neutral shades like white or gray.

Her troubles this season are both romantic (juggling her husband and flings seems like a job in and of itself) and financial (her husband puts her in massive debt). But, that commercial aside, she never seems undone by any of it, and her wardrobe generally reflects her relative groundedness.

She also channeled a little more Emily in her clothes. From the fringed pumps she wore to the Solitano-ruining influencer dinner (which, I’d argue, puts a fork in the fringed pump trend), to the metallic Alberta Ferretti evening gown she wears for a casual afternoon coffee with her mother, to the insane black outfit she wears to Princess Jane’s husband’s funeral with a big floppy hat that was sort of like the black version of Sarah Jessica Parker’s And Just Like That park-strolling hat. I guess it all somehow goes with accidentally banging your friend’s hot son.

The Men

There is a divide on this show between Luc and Julien, the creatives who love prints and whimsy and bold color, and the love interests who rock fitted polo knits and olive green and double breasted jackets. (Marcello, though, as a simple, rich Italian country boy, prefers single-breasted.)

And then there’s Jake. Let’s double click on him.

His average American dude-ness is personified by plain button-up shirts, unremarkable jeans, and a gray suit that screams “government worker.” He may have… hot dogs. (Sorry.) But does he have abs? What is he doing here? Again, I don’t know why Emily would turn down a handsome cashmere nepo baby who wears tan suits and chocolate brown shirts like a second skin in favor of, perhaps, this Jake. But maybe he’ll get a glow-up in Season 6. What else does he have to do? Drink PBR at trivia night and eat Fruit Loops in his office basement?

Let’s end on Gabriel, played by Lucas Bravo, who loves to shit on the show publicly. “The filming of this series lasts five months. Do I want to sacrifice them to do something that doesn’t excite me?” he told Le Figaro, criticizing the plotlines where people break up and get back together. “Everything is based on miscommunication. It’s a little archaic…. People can see that mechanism coming from miles away. And I don’t want to be part of a machine that tends to disregard the intelligence of its audience.”

It’s adorable he thinks we are tuning in to use our intelligence when this show succeeds because it encourages us to do exactly the opposite. Anyway, his character leaves Paris to take a job on Carrie Bradshaw’s ex’s Duncan Reeves’s yacht because, he tells Emily, he wasn’t happy and just had to. When they have lunch in Paris and she hands over the knives he forgot, there’s clearly something unfinished between them. Gabriel is more rugged now — he’s been in the sun, his hair is a little shaggier. He’s still pretty, but his look says something is different. He could cook you an omelet or patch the pothole in your driveway. That’s what a few weeks of yachting will do to you. He has as much personality as a pothole, but don’t they all, really?

The season ends with Sylvie encouraging him to pursue Emily. But with Jake and his hot dogs and Marcello and his truffles, whomst will she choose? What other men will emerge in season six to entice her? Also: Is she keeping this bob?

So many questions, all of which I will forget before the show comes back.