Clothes, Chat and Cosmos

The waiting is over. Not only is the football season finished, the Sex and The City movie is finally here. Apparently, there’s still some ‘important’ football going on in Europe. That’s fine, it creates the perfect excuse to leave the house and indulge in more cultured activities: shopping for clothes, chatting with friends, drinking Cosmopolitans.

You can be sure that magazines and newspapers will give as much column space to what is worn in the film as to the actual narrative. Expect to see countless pages devoted to ‘How To Get the Perfect Carrie, Miranda, Samantha or Charlotte Look”. The series, and now film, has always been synonymous with fashion; the clothing is as important as the character’s journeys in life and love. Indeed, the cast attribute Pat Field’s genius, as the shows fashion designer, to actually playing a fundamental role in the stories that are told. According to Sarah Jessica Parker, “She’s really good at telling story with clothes. We could not tell the story without her. Period.”

What’s always been appealing about Sex and The City is that the fashion and the characters sidestep many clichés. The women are frequently shown bickering whilst eating the most random food, they’re unafraid to be both independent and vulnerable; they’re more often ‘saved’ by friendship than a ‘prince charming’ – things that are too rarely seen in main stream TV or film. Love it or hate it, there’s no doubt that the fashion depicted refuses to follow ‘rules’. The characters might be easily identifiable as sex siren or soriety, but they express far more through their clothes than generic copycat looks. The iconic outfits, for which Carrie is famous, couldn’t be ‘put together’ in one store; they work because they are and eclectic mix of old and new, cheap and expensive.

So, when the inevitable SATC fashion craze sweeps the nation in the months to come, it will be just as easy to imitate Carrie’s creativity or Miranda’s sophistication by shopping anywhere from a vintage lingerie shop to online. Even when shops launch ‘capsule’ collections to cash in on the film, they’ll kind of be missing the point.

It’s refreshing to know that this summer’s hottest ‘on trend’ look can really only be achieved through a sense of individuality and originality. For a start, there are four characters to choose from, and, any ‘look’, if there is one, is about going further to stand out from the crowd. Most importantly, you can’t buy ‘originality’ anywhere; it comes free with a personality. Surely that’s more fun than the deluge of star prints that flooded the shops not so long ago, just because a certain model wore a star print dress on her Birthday?

There is, obviously, far more to life than shopping. Whilst we might still lust after a pair of Manolos or Choos, perhaps the biggest ‘trend’ this summer will be chatting with friends over cocktails, celebrating the ‘return’ of the individual. Not that an excuse is ever really needed, but anyway, count me in.