The pigeon clutch
The resin replica of a pigeon made by Irish designer JW Anderson, yours for £650, is a visual gag that speaks to fashion’s love of a meme. It’s also a not-so-humblebrag, in that you must be able to afford a car – or not be on your way to an actual job – if you only need enough space for a packet of Polos. It is all the privileges that the show has symbolised over the years, rolled up into one neat accessory that sits cooing beneath Carrie’s arm. Ellie Violet Bramley
The Birkin mugging
Only in this show would a bag warrant its own subplot. In episode 3 of series 2, Seema is mugged for her Hermès Birkin bag on the Upper East Side – only to find it days later, stuffed under a bush, empty of cigarettes and cash. Parking the irony that a modern mugger would steal the fags but leave the $30,000 Birkin, it was a prescient moment, airing just a few weeks before the bag’s namesake, Jane Birkin, died – and further proof that Birkins are still the go-to It Bag for conspicuous consumers. It also neatly mirrored Carrie’s Fendi Baguette mugging in SATC series 3 and, based on Samantha’s series 4 run-in with Lucy Liu’s Birkin bag, confirms Seema’s role as proxy for the missing cast member. Morwenna Ferrier
The quiet luxury ensemble
Of course Natasha, Big’s ex-wife, would be the one to speak to the current obsession with quiet luxury. There is nothing much to say about her outfit – it is understated and painfully “tasteful” – and that is the point. This kind of hyper-lowkey style embodies fashion’s affair with stealth wealth. Where once logos might have signalled that an unremarkable cardigan cost more than most people’s rent, now the proof is in the details – the stitching, the seams, the exact fabric and the breezy confidence with which it is worn. Although Natasha would never have gone in for an insignia – from the first time they met in the Hamptons, she was always the clean white tank to Carrie’s cowgirl fancy dress. EVB
The balloon shoes
It is always exciting to see something bonkers from a catwalk worn out in the (fictional) wild. In this series, Loewe comes up trumps twice – and counting. Take Carrie’s post-grief, Bergdorf Goodman shoe shopping spree, after which she found herself sat on her bed, riddled with fake Covid, trying on a pair of white heels which came with small, semi-deflated red balloons trapped under the strap. In this context, were they a comment on inflation? Was Carrie reminding us that she knows her Loewe from her Lemaire? Or was she parsing her grief through the medium of footwear? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time she tried to shop her feelings. MF
Sloganwear
The character of Che Diaz is one of a few newcomers to the Sex and the City world, and has had a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of representation. Their slogan jumper offers some assistance. For a long time, sloganwear was glib, optimistic, earnest and often twee. Now, it is often hyperspecific and, in this case, pointed – a much-needed, if surface-level, jab at the cisgender and largely heterosexual orthodoxy on which the show was built. EVB
The newspaper merch
If SATC was unclear on how a part-time writer could afford a brownstone apartment in New York, AJLT is even less clear on whether Carrie is now a working journalist at all. Even so, she likes to remind the viewer that she was, or is, a New Yorker who reads the New York press, through the medium of newspaper merch. One sweater is from the New York Daily News, another the New York Times (see also the Monopoly sweatshirt and a vintage “I Love Central Park” sweater by Jerzees in series 1). Because no one else can channel their cultural capital quite so clumsily through their clothes as Carrie and still get away with it. MF
Miranda’s hair
AJLT is obviously a fictional TV show, but its struggle to portray the ageing process is real. Miranda’s grey hair is a case in point. In series one, hair is compared and contrasted: Carrie’s dyed hair is fine because it is obviously fake; Charlotte’s is not because it’s aiming for natural brown, ergo Charlotte is passing as someone younger. That Miranda then decides to dye it back to its original copper and nothing more is said is just another ball-dropping moment in a show that used to handle this stuff well. For what it’s worth, the silver hair likely requires just as much upkeep. MF
The duvet coat
Is it a puffer jacket? Is it a sleeping bag? Is it a tent? Whatever it is, it is not practical – the Moncler coat by Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli harks back to the countless XXXL silhouettes Bradshaw has worn over the years. Such a utilitarian garment being given such a fabulous and highfalutin twist gives a peep into what the 0.0001% might be planning on wearing as climate chaos increasingly shrouds cities like New York in extreme weather. It speaks to fashion’s excess, even in the eye of the storm. EVB
The symbolic shirt
One of the reasons AJLT rose from the ashes of SATC was to address the overwhelmingly white history of the show by casting some prominent BAME characters. The first series is laden with clunking – albeit knowing – gestures towards inclusion, Black hair gaffes and Miranda’s reluctance to intervene with a mugging for fear of being a “white saviour”. It doesn’t help that, at one point, Charlotte talks about having “diverse friendships”. Thankfully, series two tones it down a bit, but there is a nod to Miranda’s attempts to adapt to a changing world, in a shirt by Ghana-based label Osei-Duro. MF
The belted Belstaff
Aidan, of wooden furniture fame, reappears in the second series of AJLT wearing a waxed, belted and buttoned Belstaff jacket. Where once he was all about scuffed suede and moth-eaten vintage T-shirts, this incarnation of his character just sold his company to West Elm and is all grown up in an expensive coat. It slots neatly into a more general smartening of style – often read as a reaction against the slouchy pandemic years – that has seen tailoring return and loungewear slope off back behind the sofa. But, let’s be clear – it is obviously not the jacket, which is winning no prizes, that makes Carrie question whether Big was a big mistake after all. EVB
The new tutu
Carrie’s most well-known outfit was the tutu from the opening credits of SATC, so reissuing that same look, at a longer length, in episode 4 is obviously a bridge between the two shows. It’s worth adding that Parker used to be a ballerina, and the real story behind the original $5 bargain bin tutu is that Patricia Field wanted to acknowledge that fact, while also showing Carrie as a materialist with princess syndrome. Never change, Carrie. MF
The high fashion gallerist
Blink and you’d miss this get-up, worn by the gen Z gallerist on day one of Charlotte’s new job: a cropped black Rick Owens jacket with shoulders pulled up into exaggerated cone shapes and cloven-toed “tabi” boots by Martin Margiela. The overall look was luxe alien but, in fashion terms, it was so specifically on point for a wealthy young woman – and so very knowing – that you had to commend the styling. We’re not, as Charlotte realised when she shook the gallerist’s hand, in Kansas any more (nor are we in Christian Louboutin). It also suggests that old guard/new guard gallery plot line will be one to watch for the rest of the series. MF
The sari
As Arushi Sinha wrote in Vogue at the time, the Diwali episode was “a messy tangle of misnomers and misappropriation”. Carrie asks new friend Seema whether wearing “a sari” would be cultural appropriation (Carrie ends up wearing a Falguni Shane Peacock lehenga rather than a sari, though the distinction is omitted from the show). “It’s not cultural appropriation,” says Seema, “It’s cultural appreciation.” As Sinha puts it, “the characters of colour on this show appear as tokens – present only to either diversify the lead character’s milquetoast lives, or as mouthpieces to say things that only a person of colour could say.” In the years since SATC first aired, western fashion has made multiple missteps – and the show itself had more than its fair share. One lehenga-wearing Carrie Bradshaw isn’t going to change all that. EVB
The repurposed wedding dress
Fashion today has inched towards a more sustainable outlook than when the series first aired in 1998. That Carrie, who has more outfits than most people have had hot dinners, decided to rewear her wedding dress to attend the Met Gala says a lot about where fashion is now versus then. Apart from this traditionally single-use garment being reworn by the gal who you wouldn’t, as a rule, catch re-wearing so much as a smile, the frock also speaks to the current resurgence of the corset. It even nods to the other seismic shift we’ve seen since – the fact that the dress’s designer and one of fashion’s most loved, puckish and rebellious spirits, Dame Vivienne Westwood, is no longer with us. EVB
The Spanx moment
Charlotte’s relationship with her body has provided far more insight into what it means to age than any other plot line since, well, Charlotte’s original desire to “settle down” in SATC. In series one, we had the menopause versus her returning period. In series 2, we have Charlotte’s tummy and the great return to work. Donning the sort of Peter Pan collared dress she wore as a 30-something gallerist, she panics at her silhouette, drinks a gallon of bone broth, buys some Spanx, wears the Spanx and then ditches the Spanx. It’s not the only time shapewear has appeared on TV (Shiv wears a Skims bodysuit in Succession), but it was a plot line first. Was the scene empowering? Yes, in a way. Until she retrieved the Spanx from the bin for a rainy day. MF
The upcycled curtain dress
On a similar theme to the repurposed wedding gown, 2023 Carrie did something her 90s-00s self would never have done: she wore a dress made out of curtains. The dress is the work of Converted Closet, a brand set up in 2016 by “refashion designer” Kate McGuire. The practice of taking old clothes and making them new is massive in fashion – brands like E.L.V denim take unwanted jeans and collage them into new pairs, and designers such as Priya Ahluwalia have taken old clothes and made them desirable enough that they are stocked by fancy shops like Matches. EVB
The cut-out Halston
As Miranda steps into a new era of sexual experimentation, it is fitting that she wears Halston – a designer who was synonymous with sexy disco style in the 60s and 70s. The fact that the sexual encounter for which she wears this dress, with its powerful shade of purple, doesn’t go to plan is incidental – the dress speaks to the enduring appeal of a great American designer. It also speaks to the current obsession with all things cut-out: although this design has a fairly orthodox peep-show cut-out, fashion is breaking the mould with wonky snips in unexpected places. Maybe Miranda will appear in a Nensi Dojaka design next. EVB
The wigs
As writer Elizabeth Randolph put it, the “bold scene” where Lisa, played by Nicole Ari Parker, removed her wig, showed something of “a Black woman’s day-to-day” life. Black hair has long been political and the fight to end race-based hair discrimination is still being fought out in the Senate. One scene in a TV show may do little to turn the dial, but it’s a far cry from Samantha wearing an afro-like accessory after losing her hair to chemotherapy. EVB
The Mugler bodysuit
Nya’s Eartha Kitt moment at the absurdly OTT Halloween party in episode 5 wasn’t the best Halloween costume of the episode – that went to Charlotte and Harry, dressed down as Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings from The Americans. But the catsuit was another moment of eerie homage-paying, designed by the French couturier Thierry Mugler who died in January 2022. His catsuits were body-conscious, futuristic, architectural and difficult to wear. Beyoncé wore one on the cover of Vogue in 2020 and Diana Ross wore one in 1991. Nya’s is very similar to Beyoncé’s, and more Catwoman than Fembot, but the real question is: how does a lecturer have £1500 to spend on a costume? MF
Rock’s Ralph Lauren moment
Charlotte’s soccer mom moment with Rock at the Ralph Lauren photoshoot felt very in keeping with her brand of parenting, which is always more Real Housewives than Emily Oster. Charlotte is obviously delighted that Lily is a world-class musician but far more excited that Rock has been scouted as a model for the very label she wore when she was a teen model (did she mention she used to be a model?). The branding is on point – Rock’s gender journey has involved skatewear, and Ralph Lauren once collaborated with Palace skateboards in 2018 – but it’s Charlotte ditching her capacious all-Burberry check for an all-Ralph Lauren equestrian look that makes this so pitch perfect and American. It’s also, probably, the first time Charlotte has worn vintage, even if it’s her own. MF
• This article was amended on 11 August 2023. Che Diaz uses they/them pronouns.
