'Sex and the City' returns, with fashion to spare
The "Sex and the City" quartet of New York career women is back and soon to provide fans with a new dose of fashion fabulousness.
"Sex and the City: The Movie" began shooting in New York on Sept. 17 and, judging from the first few days of production, the costume designer Patricia Field has lost none of her mojo.
Au contraire.
Although the movie's four stars are nearly a decade older than they were when the U.S. television series began, Field continues to dress Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her trio of BFFs (Best Friends Forever) in the same wild array of haute couture and vintage finds that transformed both fashion and television's glamour quotient when the series aired from 1999 to 2004 on the maverick cable network HBO.
" 'Sex and the City' was key to what is now driving fashion," said Merrill Greene, vice president and creative director of Stylesight, a New York-based online trend-tracking and forecasting service with clients like Macy's, Target and Victoria's Secret. "Patricia Field's curation of what is available at large gave the characters street cred and drove desire. Patricia is always on the edge, mixing things up, mixing highbrow and lowbrow."
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"The show made people want to look stylish and hip and New York cool," said the actress and model Amber Valletta. " 'Sex and the City' impacted a certain generation of women, who like the way they look and feel when they are dressed up in those sorts of urban wear."
That gear includes Manolo Blahnik stilettos, mad hats, tight jeans, full skirts, great coats, men's vests and ties and oversized designer handbags - all of which will be featured in the movie, as well as the bold colors and geometric prints that Field pulled for the series from designers like Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Blumarine, Chanel, Prada and Roberto Cavalli.
Remember the floppy, fabric flower pins that Parker's character wore in the series? On the third day of shooting, Parker wore the accessory deconstructed: a gold and silver lamé hibiscus larger than her head, perched on the shoulder of a shirred, white jersey sheath .
And the Swarovski-encrusted Timmy Woods Eiffel Tower bag that Parker carried on the first day of production was an homage to the series finale, which took place in Paris.
There were more cabbage roses on Parker the first week of filming than you would find in a Dorothy Draper living room. As cast and crew traipsed between Christie's, the Four Seasons Hotel and the New York Library, Parker donned a red cabbage rose bubble dress over a sheath in the same material with zebra high heels.
This ensemble followed a green floral print dress with a sleeveless coat in a different green floral pattern, which was paired with a black studded belt and brown studded high-heeled Dior sandals.
When the film is released in May 2008, Greene expects to see the four stars dressed in clothes that are light and feminine, featuring very modern fabrics and lots of color.
"I expect Patricia will be in her hyper-girlieness in Sarah's character," said Greene. "The London designers had a really good season; she may pull from Christopher Kane, Mario Schwab, Clare Tough. Dolce and Gabbana looked fabulous and Prada was very curvy in an Art Nouveau kind of way."
Whatever she is wearing, Carrie Bradshaw will no doubt be wearing it with her Manolo Blahniks, a brand now coveted - thanks to the show - from Toronto to Tours.
The other night, Valletta and a couple of girlfriends were out in Beverly Hills in their Manolo Blahniks when one of the women, who is pregnant, kicked off her shoes.
"Then I took off mine, and there we all were, out for the evening, Manolos in hand," Valletta recalled. "We had to laugh because it was such a 'Sex and the City' moment."