This weekend, the International Best-Dressed List was released — its 79th iteration, but the first under its new caretaker, Air Mail, the Graydon Carter newsletter/zine. Did you notice?

Once upon a time the crowning of a new set of style royalty was so newsworthy that reporters from The Rocky Mountain News to The Daily Mail in England would vie for the scoop. And yet this year, the announcement that Cate Blanchett and Roger Federer had taken top honors, that Janelle Monáe, Zoë Kravitz, LeBron James and Zac Posen (among others — 30 in all, from 16 countries) had also been recognized, feels more anticlimactic than edge-of-the-seat anticipatory.

Despite our seeming unending appetite for “best of” lists (which this year has taken an even more extreme turn thanks to the end of the decade), all of them apparently read and pored over and shared until they trend on a variety of metrics, are we, actually, over the best-dressed list? The one that was among the first of them all?

I am beginning to think the answer is yes.

In our fractured world, where the individual has become ascendant and the digital sphere has elevated the obscure to the influential, where trends have devolved into everything you want all the time, and formality has become a choice rather than a professional diktat, the idea of an unnamed group of people ruling on who is “best dressed” seems increasingly as anachronistic as “no white after Labor Day.” (Tell that to Nancy Pelosi.)