Close your eyes and imagine a line-up of all of Sex and the City Carrie Bradshaw’s most iconic outfits.
Now, try not to be disappointed when you can’t buy these outfits, but instead actress Sarah Jessica Parker has teased a style exhibition.
Since Carrie first strutted the streets of New York City in that pink tutu, she was labelled a style icon. Which means people have been vying for her incredibly enviable wardrobe since June 1996.
But most of it has been locked up in Sarah’s own wardrobe – literally. It was written into Sarah’s contract that she was allowed to keep all of the clothing items from the show.
However, some of the clothing has been sold! That iconic tiered tutu we mentioned before was discovered in a $5 bargain bin by costume designer Patricia Field and was sold for $52,000 at auction.
Carrie’s loud and colourful wardrobe continued with And Just Like That, which was unfortunately cancelled after season three.
With AJLT over, the actress has said an exhibition would be possible during a Q&A, hosted by Threads. But there is one issue.
“I would say we have 78% of everything that I’ve ever worn on the show,” she said, adding, “The absences are from designers who rightfully wanted it back or loaned. Those are typically the reasons that they’re not in my archive.”
“So we have as much as possible and we, in many cases, have soup to nuts. We have from [the head] to the feet.”
And yes, like any sane person with access to such a beautiful array of clothing, Sarah has occasionally raided the archive for her own personal outings.
While we anxiously wait for the news of a Carrie Bradshaw style exhibition, below are some of the sex columnists most iconic fashion moments.
Iconic Richard Tyler Dress
In the third season, Carrie styled this beautiful Richard Tyler floral dress with a Dior bag and Catalano mules. While the outfit is stunning, that’s not exactly what makes it iconic. But rather the memorable scene where she catastrophically falls into the lake in Central Park with Mr Big. Yikes!
Carrie’s style embody’s her personality, it’s fun, loud, and sometimes a bit ditsy. But this all-black outfit in the first episode showed a grungy side to the sex-columnist and it may have been the only time we’ve seen the writer in an all-black outfit in SATC.
This black ensemble was what Carrie wore when she first met (more so collided) with Mr Big and the explicit contents of her purse spilled all over the pathway.
Before there was the “naked dress”, there was the DKNY slip dress that Carrie first wore for a photo shoot to promote her newspaper column. The ad was plastered across many buses in NYC with the tag line: “Carrie Bradshaw knows good sex… and isn’t afraid to ask.”
Knowing the dresses scandalous power, Carrie then wore it to her first date with Mr Big – and we all remember how that ended.
This was one of the first few outfits photographed by paparazzi on the set of AJLT season 3, and it shocked the internet. She truly channelled some of Carrie’s most iconic outfit moments, particularly the tutu skirt, with this sheer blush tulle dress from Simone Rocha.
This oversized fut coat made a few appearances on SATC, but the most memorable moment was post-Mr Big breakup when Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha tried to drag Carrie out of her slump by watching a baseball game.
Carrie was only a fan of “anywhere you could smoke and drink at two in the afternoon without judgement,” until a rookie Yankee caught her eye. In classic single-Carrie style, she did her iconic run to grab his phone number.
This is proof that fashion trends certainly do come around! Carrie rocked the straw cowboy hat look decades before it was popular.
She styled the hat with a snakeskin boob tube and a red stripped skirt. On paper, the outfit shouldn’t work, but it looked great!
Carrie was best known for her flamboyant outfits, but she did occasionally tone the glamour down. She particularly loved styling a tube top with cargo pants – and so too did Friends’ Rachel Green – with a staple statement necklace.
One of our favourite fashion moments from AJLT was this low-cut, baby blue satin corseted bodice with a gray-blue pleated skirt Carrie wore in the third season.
Carrie once again made fashion history when she wore the John Galliano newspaper printed dress for Dior. It achieved cult status after Carrie wore the dress during the third season while dramatically walking through the crowded street of Manhattan – probably pondering about her relationships.
