Caitlin Brown
Essay #2
4:37pm/ March 27th, 2015
Many voguish female leads have come and gone in TV and movie land, but none of them has quite left their mark like Carrie Bradshaw. Carrie Bradshaw has the story that every girl could relate to: a “starving” professional in New York City who justifies spending copious amounts of money on luxurious fashionable stuff like Manolos before making payments on her apartment and a defined fearless fashion: plaid crop tops, mismatched prints, tutus, menswear-inspired ensembles and over-the-top embellishments. She is an icon and did as much to shift the culture around certain women’s issues as real-life feminist groundbreakers. Carrie is a fictional character that we all love and has been (and quite honestly, still) an inspiration for several woman. She taught us the A to Zs of fashion and I’ll be lying if I said that I knew of Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin before I saw Sex and the City. From the moment she appeared on the HBO screen, women everywhere (including me) began to bow down to the one female who could truly pull off any look. Not only did Carrie Bradshaw take fashion to the next level, but she single-handedly changed the face of high end brands like Manolo Blahnik, Dior, and of course Chanel. The fashion icon single-handedly turned Manolo Blahnik into a household name. From Dior to Fendi, from Oscar de la Renta to her Vivienne Westwood wedding dress, her wardrobe is what our (or at least my) dreams are made of.
It has been eleven years since we said goodbye to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda (and their fantasy closets) when Sex and the City ended in 2004. Over Sex and the City’s six seasons, and two-feature films, Carrie Bradshaw made several items in her closet world famous. Her fur coat, tutu, heels, and accessories all became staple pieces in her wardrobe, which ultimately turned her into the fashion icon of the twenty first century. There are not enough positive adjectives to describe this character's impeccable, risk-taking attitude. She constantly pushed her style to another level, yet never took it to a kooky place (well, maybe sometimes), from crop tops to Jimmy Choos, fur coats to Yves Saint Laurent, Carrie provided an endless amount of eye candy and insurmountable inspiration — but the real credit goes to the stylists behind the scenes, namely Patricia Field and Rebecca Weinberg. Parker and Fields bonded over their love of fashion of the set of one of Parker’s movies.
Fields, a fashion visionary, is best known as the costume designer and stylist on Sex and the City, was responsible for crafting all of Carrie’s iconic looks. Fields is as iconic as the actresses she dresses. She has changed the way women wear clothes ever since steering the style on the trendsetting show. She has set trends and launched careers, and is also responsible for Hollywood's hits from Confessions of a Shopaholic to Ugly Betty to The Devil Wears Prada. Thanks to the ingenious styling provided by Fields, Bradshaw’s eclectic wardrobe is the perfect combination of vintage and haute couture. The stylist is the brain behind Carrie Bradshaw’s most recognizable looks among woman such as “the tutu.”
In the picture above, this famous outfit portrays Carrie at her most pure- provocative, yet elegant and simple in her tulle miniskirt and a sheer, nipple-exposing tank top and stilettos while wandering through the streets of New York City.
It is impossible to mention tutu skirts without instantly thinking of Carrie Bradshaw. Like every other woman, I have seen every episode of HBO's now-legendary Sex and the City. Which means, of course, that I have also watched that famous bus-splashing-Carrie's-tutu intro at least a million times. Everyone's favorite style icon loved a bit of tutu skirt action, from the famous tutu in the opening sequence, to the pastel green style she wears in Paris when Big, her longtime partner, comes to finally declare his love for her. So what made this
