Those clothes are criminal! Ridiculous hats and frilly tutus - Why Sex and the City's Carrie is wanted by the fashion police

By Liz Jones

Don't do it! Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, in the Sex and the City film wearing an oversized corsage, 'duvet' dress and over-the-knee socks


Thanks to Sex And The City, women no longer dress as men at work, but instead wear colourful, girlie prints. The character Carrie Bradshaw was a woman who dressed to please herself, not to make her attractive to men.

Patricia Field, the Oscar-nominated costume designer, gave us vintage, utility and eccentric layering. She brought back the full skirt, the prom dress, the eighties (even the batwing, cropped sweatshirt) and stilettos.

But the problems started when we began to take literally what a fictional character wore to make a point, drive a scene or promote a belly laugh. We began to buy £400 pairs of shoes and £800 handbags with no thought of wardrobe space or our credit rating. Very few of us can walk in those shoes.

Carrie looked effortless in bondage shoe boots, corsets, black net and gold lame, while the rest of us ended up resembling over-the-hill hookers.

As the second film hits our screens, let's look back at the clothes and weep ...


OVER-THE-KNEE SOCKS

Worn with platforms and a mini kilt in the first movie, they suited Carrie because she's as tiny as a child. In real life, you looked as though you are auditioning for the Krankies. The socks kept falling down, too...

NAMEPLATE NECKLACES

CarrIe started lots of jewellery trends: the silver locket, lots of necklaces worn at once, an engagement ring worn on a chain, ropes of fake pearls. But the most prominent was the cheap 'Carrie' necklace. On a real woman, the effect is one that makes our loved ones wonder whether we have Alzheimer's.

FASCINATORS

A Cross between a hat and a hair slide, remember the scene where Carrie wears a ridiculous tiny hat, like a sparrow, during a fight with Burger, who makes fun of it, as any man would? In the new film, she wears a black lace fascinator for a gay wedding and looks ridiculous. Trouble is, the haberdashery department of Debenhams never looked back, while every summer wedding for the past decade has seen flocks of women with bits of tat in their hair.


Fashion overkill: Carrie, pictured in the new film in white stilettos, on set of the show in rolled-up jeans and the iconic tutu image that featured in the opening credits


KOHL EYE MAKE-UP

The thing I like about Carrie is that sometimes she looks beautiful and sometimes she looks terrible - just like the rest of us. But she always looks better with soft, dewy make-up. In both movies, she wears kohl, making her eyes bead-like and harsh. You need enormous eyes to pull this look off, otherwise you'll resemble raisins in a mound of unbaked dough.

TUTUS

CarrIe wore a tutu in the opening credits of the TV show, and it reappeared in the first film when she packs up her wardrobe. It is very Eighties, and works on Carrie given her ballerina body, but wearing one I felt like one of those Disney ice-skating hippos.

FULL SKIRTS

In the new film, Carrie wears a crinoline with a vintage Dior t-shirt and cropped cardie. To pull off this extraordinary garment, you need a tiny waist, which modern gals no longer possess. The full skirt doesn't work in real life: have you worn one in a cinema or economy class? You need stiff petticoats and quality fabric, otherwise it gets droopy and creased.


Over the top: Carrie shows off her bra, clashes colours, and in that Dior newspaper print dress from the show, that also makes a reappearance in the new film


FENDI BAGS

The baguette and its smaller sibling, the croissant, were soon nestling in the armpits of women who had been brainwashed into believing it was reasonable to pay so much for something so small even your mobile won't fit in it. Carrie changed handbag many, many times a day, sending the luxury goods market into the stratosphere and bankrupting far too many of us.

MAXI DRESSES

We saw the maxi in the first movie, but it comes into its own in SATC2. It swamps Carrie, but she carries it off with flats and armlets, bed-head hair and sinewy, bare arms. The problem is that when you wear yeards of brightly coloured fabric, you can resemble Demis Roussos or something found hanging either side of a window. and you trip up and your hem gets dirty. Work colleagues no longer take you seriously. Men no longer find you sexy...


Full skirts: In the new film, Carrie wears a crinoline with a vintage Dior t-shirt and cropped cardie. To pull off this extraordinary garment, you need a tiny waist, which modern gals no longer possess


ROLLED UP JEANS & HEELS

Patricia Field was responsible for the noughties trend for combat trousers with stilettos: the masculine dressed up with the ultra-feminine. Rolled-up jeans with heels swiftly followed. In real life, our legs looked short and stumpy. Boyfriend jeans (I hate this term: why do I need a man to own a garment?) also took off thanks to SATC, a style that looks great if you are diminutive, but will make you look like an off-duty Clare Balding if not.

STRIPPER SHOES

Carrie made the fortunes of Jimmy Choo, Christian louboutin and Manolo Blahnik, and her style evolved from pointy stilettos to shoe boots to stripper bondage numbers.

Team these shoes with thunder thighs and new look clothing in a shopping precinct, rather than Park avenue, and the result is disastrous.

GLOVES

FIngerless gloves , evening gloves reaching to the elbow, colourful satin day gloves - Carrie loved them all. When we wore them, we looked like a cross between steptoe, Princess Margaret in her later years and as if we were about to do the washing-up.

CORSAGES

'I Made Carrie's signature corsage larger than life for the opening scene of the first movie because film has to be bigger, more outrageous than a TV show,' Patricia Field told me. Her point is that we are not supposed to take these looks literally, but many of us did, looking like superannuated prom queens in the process.

ARM WARMERS

Carrie used to tap, tap, tap away wearing these hot, scratchy little garments. In real life, you resemble a bag lady trying to keep warm.

BARE BROWN LEGS

We hankered after Carrie's bandy pins, while our own would benefit from sheer tights in summer, opaque in winter. Carrie predated the Wags, where dim young women fail to team their bare, brown legs with something ironic such as ankle boots, and instead wear stilettos, ankle chains, French manicures (Carrie never, ever wore nail polish) and tattoos.


Showstopper: That Vivienne Westwood wedding dress, in a white suit and tie and sporting an Hermes Birkin

BALOON DRESSES

Sticky-outy, with volume at the back, a stiff skirt and wings over the hips. We all looked like pregnant Quasimodos and took up far too much space on the bus.

VEST DRESSES

Carrie wore these all the time at home: they clung to her tiny frame. In real life, these dresses were worn far too short and tight over bodies that were never meant to wear a vest dress, let alone a skintight lycra one.

WHITE STILETTOS

tEaMED with a red spot coat and full skirt by Carrie in Paris in the tV series, they were almost classy. adopted by all of us, they looked very Essex and very Eighties. they soon got dirty, too.

SHEER

Carrie was overly fond of sheer. trouble is, very few of us have breasts small and pert enough to go without underwear.

source: dailymail