The Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, has received mixed reviews from fans, with some despairing at the show's attempts to shoehorn in every issue of the moment into each episode, and others simply thrilled to see their favourite women back on screen (well, not all of them — Kim Cattrall who plays Samantha Jones famously has not returned to the show, citing feuds with castmasts and “career growth” as the reasons). But one thing that’s remained constant from the original series is just how great its fashion moments can be.
The original Sex and the City series revolutionised how we saw women’s sexuality on TV. It also offered escapism in the form of fashion to viewers who also wondered how Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) could afford so many $400 (£295) pairs of shoes.
Thanks to Patricia Field's iconic costume design, fashion was pivotal to each of the four main characters of the show: Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha. It expressed their personalities in ways that words couldn’t.
Though Field was unable to return to dress the women for And Just Like That, as she was busy shooting Emily in Paris, her ex assistant Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago have followed in her sartorial footsteps to hit the same notes and ensure the costume is still as lust-worthy as ever, making small nods to the fashion that made the original series so memorable.
From Carrie’s iconic hangover poncho to her tulle skirts and Charlotte’s pink tweed, here are all the ways And Just Like That pays homage to the fashion of its younger counterpart.
The mille-feuille Versace dress
Who could forget Carrie's gorgeous dusky teal Versace dress? The gown first appears in the final Sex and the City series when Carrie joins “the Russian” Aleksandr Petrovsky in Paris. In the penultimate episode An American Girl In Paris (Part Une), Carrie is “all dressed up and no Petrovsky to go” as her artist boyfriend stays late at a museum meeting leaving Carrie to fall asleep in her “mille-feuille” dress alone in their hotel room.
The dress was resurrected in episode eight of And Just Like That, where Carrie is seen cleaning out her wardrobe. Speaking of the fabulous frock she says: “I’ve only worn her twice, once in Paris and once just for fun - I sat at that window and ate a whole thing of Jiffy Pop.” The end of the episode sees Carrie sitting on her apartment windowsill wearing the Versace gown and once again eating the American popcorn snack, marking the third time she’s worn it.
The Single & Fabulous? poncho
Carrie’s knitted Mexican-style poncho first appeared when the columnist attends her infamous New York Magazine shoot. The night before, Carrie and the girls had gone on a big night out following one of numerous break ups with Big “four single girlfriends found themselves without a relationship at the exact same time” — and slept through her alarm for the shoot the following morning.
When the issue comes out, Carrie finds herself on the cover, smoking and without make-up with the cover line: Single and fabulous?
The poncho made a reappearance two decades later when it was sported by Charlotte’s 15-year-old daughter Lily, who is helping Carrie archive her wardrobe and hiding out at her apartment following a disagreement with her mum about her secret Instagram account.
The ‘Heidi’ dress
The "Heidi" dress makes its first appearance in the second season as Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte go to a park for a picnic. Here, we get to peep the "single and fabulous" poncho once again as Carrie removes it when she sits down to reveal her "Heidi" dress underneath.
The dress made a reappearance in the eighth episode of And Just Like That, with Carrie holding it out to show her friend Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) as she continues to clean out her closet and revisit some of her favourite fashion moments.
The runway look
The team behind And Just Like That’s costumes alerted us all after episode four dropped that we may have missed a few key items lying on Carrie’s bed: her season four runway outfit.
The episode (Season 4, Episode 2: The Real Me) saw Carrie walk — and trip — down the runway in a Dolce and Gabbana trench coat and bejewelled underwear becoming “fashion road kill” when Heidi Klum stepped over her. The coat and its leopard print lining can be seen sitting next to Carrie on the bed.
Charlotte’s pink tweed
It’s no secret that Charlotte is a fan of both pink and tweed — she wore the colour and fabric separately and together throughout the Sex and the City series.
In And Just Like That’s second episode, Charlotte wears a St. John tweed empire-waist midi dress, similar to the pink tweed jacket, skirt and matching bag she wore in the original series. Two decades on, her look is more elevated as she’s accessorised it with Cartier's Panthère de Cartier watch and a Louis Vuitton Capucines bag.
The pearl hat
“Some outfits take a lifetime to be taken somewhere special,” Carrie muses in the penultimate episode of the final Sex and the City season. The outfit in question is her striped monochrome top and skirt that she wears as she arrives in Paris. When she steps out of the car in front of Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Carrie has accessorised her look with this pearl-adorned hat and sparkly black jacket.
The reboot nods to the hat but switches out the pearls for a monochromatic twisted scarf.
Miranda’s red looks
Red is Miranda’s colour, it just looks so striking on her — she even wore red for her wedding to Steve. So when she wore this red jumpsuit in episode three of And Just Like That, we knew she was on to a winner.
The jumpsuit reminded us of Miranda’s other red looks, notably this burgundy dress by RM by Roland Mouret she wears in the second Sex and the City film.
Fendi’s purple baguette
It was a bad day that got worse for Carrie when she first clutched the purple sequin Fendi bag. After running into Big’s ex Natasha at lunch, she was mugged at gunpoint, with the theif taking her bag — “It’s a baguette!” — and her Manolo Blahniks.
Two decades later, Fendi has re-released the bag from its Autumn/Winter 1999 collection to coincide with its appearance in the new series. The bag has appeared in multiple episodes of And Just Like That and retails for $4,300 (£3,247).
The tulle skirt
Carrie has had a love affair with tulle skirts for nearly 25 years, one of the most memorable being the tulle skirt she wears in the original Sex and the City title sequence.
However, the maxi tulle skirt she wears in episode four of And Just Like That is more reminiscent of the ruffled white skirt look she wore towards the end of the final series of the show, on a date with Petrovsky which ended with him killing a mouse with a frying pan. Chic indeed. The costume designers brought back the same white boots to complete the look in the new series.
The oversized hat
Carrie knows being properly dressed means covering all bases — from head to toe. While we thought her oversized hat phase peaked in the second Sex and the City movie with her crumpled Yohji Yamamoto hat, she brought back the trend for the rebooted series.
After discovering her “favourite sunhat” in storage, Carrie wears the hat while viewing apartments with Seema. As to why she’s wearing so many hats this season, Santiago told Marie Claire Australia: “Carrie’s just really feeling hats, it’s something we were really into.”
The flowers and the Manolos
Oversized flower pins were Carrie’s thing during the Sex and the City series, so it’s nice to see that she’s stayed true to her sartorial roots for And Just Like That.
The blue flower brooch she’s seen wearing in the rebooted series made its first appearance in season three of Sex and the City. She’s dating “the politician” Bill Kelley (John Slattery) and he’s just posed the whole ... “princess and the pee” situation. Carrie wears the blue flower pinned to a fur jacket as she talks about her sexual predicament with Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda.
The sapphire-coloured Manolos that Carrie wore to marry Mr Big also made a triumphant (and tragic) return in the reboot. The blue Manolo Blahnik shoes feature heavily in the first Sex and the City movie, as this was the only pair of shoes left in Carrie and Big’s “heaven on Fifth” apartment — which was ultimately where they got back together. They then feature in the couple's re-proposal as Big gets down on one knee and slips one onto Carrie's foot. The shoes returned in the first episode of And Just Like That, with Carrie wearing them to Lily’s piano rehearsal and then getting them wet when she arrives home to Big — *spoiler* — having a heart attack.
The studded belt
Carrie’s thrifted studded belt made its first appearance in the first Sex and the City film where it was worn multiple times — from when she and big first viewed their new apartment to when she was out shopping in a pink mini dress.
The belt, which now lives in Parker’s closet, was reused a decade on in the new rebooted series in one of the first episodes.
Carrie’s suits
No one wears a suit quite like Carrie does — who could forget her black tailored suit and headdress she wore for Stanford’s wedding?
In the new series, she wears a Jean Paul Gaultier look from Spring/Summer 1997, which could be a homage to the Thomas Short white suit she wears in the first Sex and the City film.
