For Sex and the City 2, New York designer and stylist Patricia Field came back to create more sometimes bizarre, mostly gorgeous, and always fantastical outfits for Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha. “The clothes of Sex and the City establish and strengthen the relationship that the audience has with these four girls,†she told us. “I’m presenting thought-out and intelligent visuals. There’s a logic to it: It’s not just haphazard; it’s not just trendy — it’s part of the storytelling.†We had her deconstruct looks from the movie, giving us backstories for each outfit, including the one that cost a reported $50,000 (“Come on, it’s fantasy!â€).
“Oh, this is my homage to Galliano — I love him; Sarah Jessica loves him. And so I use him a lot just because I love his clothes. The J’adore Dior is a vintage piece, about ten years old, and it was just sitting there and we were like, ‘Where the hell are we going to use this?’ And that skirt is really a crinoline under a gown — it’s a slip, and it was beautiful. So I said, ‘Let’s use the slip as a skirt and do our Carrie, funk-it-up style with that Dior T-shirt.’ The colors look so good together. She’s out shopping in the Middle East, so we put a little jacket on her, and the long skirt was an answer to the more modest dressing of the area. We mixed up the high and low, because that’s who Carrie is, and it doesn’t matter if you’re 30 or 40 or 50: You’ll always express yourself that way, your originality that’s your personal style. And I always fought for that for Carrie. She’s not the rubber-stamp girl like Charlotte.â€
“This is in the very beginning of the movie, when the girls are meeting to go shopping in Bergdorfs. There’s a side of Samantha that I like to underline, that instead of being overly dolled up, [if you] just pull her back to something simple, it gives her a lot of youth. It was a more understated kind of Samantha outfit, not overly thought out. These women go shopping, they have cocktails, all in these clothes. They live out the fashion magazine. It’s part of the fantasy. I grew up in the Upper East Side, and Bloomingdales was my neighborhood store, and I had that New York City–Upper East Side shopping experience as a kid. People used to really dress up for everything. When I was 12, I had a Burberry raincoat that I wore every day.â€
“The newspaper dress! Carrie’s worn this before, of course, in season three when she was going to apologize to Natasha for sleeping with Big. It was intentional on my part; the choice of the newspaper dress was motivated by the plot. It was a very iconic dress from the series. It’s not something I generally do, but sometimes — like in the last movie, I dug out her old fur coat. It was New Year’s Eve, Carrie was alone, Miranda was alone, so she grabbed her coat and went to Miranda’s house. The Dior dress is more directly plot related, and this Dior connection goes even deeper. The first season, the last outfit of the last episode, when she was in front of the Plaza and she realized that Big was gone, going with Natasha, she wore a white Dior dress. That was the first time that I used Dior, and when she goes to apologize to Natasha, there’s that underlying thing that there’s Dior there. There’s something symbolic about that brand.â€
This Gaultier robe ended up on the cutting-room floor. “Ah, I love this robe. Last week I went to a screening of the movie, and after I left, I thought about this outfit and didn’t remember seeing it. This is like a man-tailored silk robe; it’s got a ten-foot train — it’s fabulous! It’s just for Samantha; she’s wearing it in her hotel room. It was one of my favorite pieces in the movie, but you know, sometimes stuff gets cut.â€
“It was a concern of Sarah Jessica’s that Carrie’s not a kid anymore, and so maybe we should change her style, but I said, ‘No, she’s not a kid, but she’s still Carrie! She doesn’t all of a sudden have a lobotomy and become like Charlotte, or become a designer-driven dresser.’ In this shot, Carrie has a potpourri on.†(This is the $50,000 outfit.) “That’s a Chanel skirt over a pair of jeans by the Blonds, the same design team that made Samantha’s dress. They have all these cuts and slits in them, behind which are Swarovskis and studs. And it’s just a simple blouse she’s wearing, I think it’s vintage, which is classic Carrie. Charlotte’s wearing a vintage YSL that I found at a vintage dealer in New York. Here, Miranda’s wearing an old Halston, which I used a lot of in the movie. It’s green, one of those colors that not many women can wear, but that looks great on her. I’m not sure what’s going on with her hair, though. I don’t like it curled up that way. Hair-makeup and wardrobe are two different departments. I love Samantha’s dress! It’s from a design team that I have a personal relationship with called the Blonds. They’re both men, but one dresses like a woman, and they’re like a couple. And Phillipe Blond was wearing this red dress at some event we were both at, and I said to him, ‘Phillipe we have to have that dress for the movie!’ … You know how people talk about how Samantha is just like a drag queen? This was my little double entendre about that.â€
“Here they’re arriving in the Middle East. Once we got there, I went crazy with headwear, because it’s a requirement of the area. Of course, I did it in my own way, as you can see. Usually in cinema they hate headwear; the lighting, the camera, the shadows, and we’re always fighting for the right to use it, so this was delivered to me on a silver platter. Charlotte uses a classic sun hat, with a big brim, which is very Charlotte. The secret is that I wanted her to wear a different scarf in that, but she felt that Charlotte wouldn’t do that, so she won the argument. It was red and white, that Palestinian pattern that comes in checkered black and white. It’s become as run-of-the-mill as leopard print, but she thought that Charlotte, being married to a Jew, wouldn’t wear that. So in the end she wore a simple white one. Carrie’s wearing this Halston piece — it was a bit daring because it covered one shoulder but showed the other, so it was my compromise. Samantha’s wearing these sequin pants from Ralph Lauren, like a cargo type of pant, like a harem pant. It was Samantha’s way of dressing Arabian.â€
“This is in the Middle Eastern desert in a tent. In the course of this desert jaunt that they do, they have three changes, which is really funny. This, to me, is giving you Sex and the City: the hysterical. Miranda’s dress is gorgeous, by the way — that dress is an antique. When I first met Cynthia Nixon at the beginning of the series, she said to me, ‘Pat, you’re the expert, I’m not into fashion, just dress me, I trust you.’ That was a compliment, but in a way it posed a problem, because anyone with any opinions gave them, and Miranda’s style became a muddle. But after the series was over, Cynthia’s lifestyle took an abrupt, personal change, and I think it really impacted her. A few months before we started to prep for the first movie, I saw a small picture of her in a magazine, and she looked so gorgeous. She had let her hair grow, and that picture gave me all the inspiration for the Miranda of the movies. She looked 100 percent better.â€
“The Halston. We got it originally from a vintage dealer, and that started the whole Halston idea for the movie. I wanted to open up with one, because I feel very strong about what Halston represents in fashion, particularly at this point, when it’s post-shoulders and balloon dresses and whatever. Plus, the white color; it just defines that chic simplicity. When they got out in the Middle East, they got more into the flying-carpet thing, but in New York, I really liked that simple chic. Halston is New York — he was a very close of friend of mine; I miss him all the time. This just works for Carrie and Sarah Jessica. Behind every character is a real person, and my formula is to find the parallels between the character and the real person, and stay there — don’t reinvent it.â€