‘Sex and the City’: Costume Designer Explained Why She Loved Working With Sarah Jessica Parker

When it comes to Sex and the City, as much as fans lived for the character Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), and Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), the fashion on the show was its own character in the series. The women all had their personal style that shifted and expanded across the six seasons of the show.

Now, SATC costume designer Patricia Field is explaining why she loved working with Sarah Jessica Parker to bring all of those iconic looks to life.

Carrie Bradshaw always wore Manolo Blahniks on ‘Sex and the City’

Fans of Sex and the City know that Carrie’s signature shoe brand one the series was Manolo Blahniks. Though she sported other brands here and there, Manolo’s were her signature, and there was a reason for that. New York City shoe boutique owner George Malkemus supplied the shoe brand to Field at a discount.

“George was more than happy to supply shoes when I began working on SATC, and Sarah Jessica was more than happy to wear them,” Field told Daily Mail.

‘Sex and the City’ costume designer Patricia Field loved working with Sarah Jessica Parker

Field was behind the extravagant and lush looks that Carrie Bradshaw sported in Sex and the City. Field said one of the joys of working on the show was being able to style and create with Parker who is a fashionista herself. In fact, Parker handpicked Field to work on the show. She told Salon,

I did love working with Sarah Jessica because she got it. I didn’t have to do any explaining to her. She’s very fashion. So that was really very encouraging for me. She understood it. We had worked previously on a film in Miami. That’s where we met. Then history repeated itself with Sex and the City. She brought me to Darren Star, actually. Because she was fashion, you didn’t have to explain it to her. It was really fun to work with her on that level. She was secure in her fashion. She had a beautiful body because she was ballet-trained. She’s a tiny little one. But she wore those clothes and those shoes. It was inspiring for me. 

How much money did Carrie Bradshaw spend on shoes?

It’s no secret that Carrie loved to spend extravagantly on shoes and clothing in Sex and the City. Since she was a single childless woman living in a rent-controlled apartment, she could do so without too much upset in her life. However, she had to become much savvier when it came to actually saving her money when she found herself on the verge of being evicted from her apartment following a bad breakup.

In the Sex and the City episode “Ring A Ding Ding,” Carrie realized that she had at least 100 pairs of shoes that cost about $400. She was stunned when she realized how much she’d spent on her footwear without any concern about saving for the future.

“I spent $40,000 on shoes, and I have no place to live?” she says. For a woman making at least six figures in New York City in the early 2000s, Carrie had to learn to make much smarter choices regarding her finances.

However, she never gave up her love of shoes.