Lifestyle
The enduring appeal of the 'Sex and the City' tutu
Sarah Jessica Parker is pictured in the tutu in the 2008 Sex and the City movie.
Collection Christophel/HBO/New Line Cinema/Alamy file
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Collection Christophel/HBO/New Line Cinema/Alamy file
Sarah Jessica Parker is pictured in the tutu in the 2008 Sex and the City movie.
Collection Christophel/HBO/New Line Cinema/Alamy file
A tutu worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in the hit HBO TV series Sex and the City has sold at auction for $52,000 — over four times more than expected.
Made out of layers of white tulle and a satin waistband, the tutu became famous after Parker wore it with a pink tank top and strappy heels in the opening credits for the show, which originally ran from 1998 to 2004.
The auction house Julien’s Auctions had expected the airy ballet skirt would fetch just $12,000. The sale this month came as part of the auction house’s Unstoppable: Signature Styles of Iconic Women in Fashion Hits the Auction Runway sale.
In the Sex and the City opening sequence, the camera pulls back to reveal the skirt just as a bus splashes Parker’s character, girl-about-town Carrie Bradshaw, with puddle water. “It was so good for that pie-in-the-face,” Parker said in a 2018 interview for People of the contrast between the picture-pretty pastel outfit and the sudden, embarrassing dousing of its previously happy-go-lucky wearer.
According to the auctioneer’s website, costume designer Patricia Field found the skirt in the $5 bin in a New York Garment District store.
“Parker’s character was originally going to wear a spring 1998 Marc Jacobs runway dress in the opening credits, but Field wanted to style her in something that wasn’t specific to the time so it wouldn’t date fashion-wise. She showed the skirt to Parker who loved the idea,” the website said.
“We talked a lot about what this should be — thrilled that was the decision we made,” Parker said in the People interview. “I would never wear it myself personally. But it’s spot on.”
The tutu didn’t fetch nearly as much money as other outfits presented at the auction. A black velvet Catherine Walker cocktail dress worn by Princess Diana and Princess Grace’s 1961 Givenchy ensemble worn to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy both sold for $325,000.
Yet Sex and the City was known for its fashions, making 20-somethings fully conversant in the language of Manolo Blahnik, Prada and Fendi. And like many of the outfits Parker wore on the show, the tutu has gone on to develop quite an afterlife.
“While Sarah Jessica Parker had her handful of iconic outfits while playing Carrie Bradshaw during Sex and the City (read: Manolo Blahnik pumps, newspaper dresses, purple Fendi baguette bags), her number one, unforgettable, quintessential look was undoubtably her tiered white tulle skirt,” wrote Samantha Holender in an article about the show’s fashions for Us.
Articles have chronicled the in-depth history of the tutu, while it’s inspired the runway trends of major fashion houses.
“After using it often at Valentino, Maria Grazia Chiuri brought tulle back in a big way in her first collection for Dior – and the frocks went on to be worn by some of the world’s most famous red-carpet stars, including Jennifer Lawrence and Bella Hadid,” wrote Harper’s Bazaar‘s Amy de Klerk in a 2018 article about Sex and the City‘s key styles.
Knock-off versions of the skirt — as well as outfits inspired by it — can be found in abundance on clothing websites for prices ranging from less than $100 to more than $2,000. Replicas have been auctioned off for charity. And the tutu has also outfitted drag queens and myriad Halloween costumes.
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The skirt reappeared in the 2008 Sex and the City movie — when Bradshaw pulled the item from her closet and decided not to throw it out — as well as in the 2021 TV show reboot, And Just Like That, albeit in a longer, billowier version.
Parker reinvented the style in black as part of her debut LBD (Little Black Dress) fashion collection in 2016. And she donned a Carolina Herrera tutu dress worth more than $4,000 to a performance last year at the New York City Ballet.
“She channeled her inner Carrie Bradshaw,” wrote Ruby McAuliffe in InStyle of Parker’s look that night.
In Alice and Steve, Jemaine Clement and Nicola Walker play long-time friends who turn on each other after he gets involved with her 26-year-old daughter.
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I grew up watching episodic shows on network TV, nearly all of them formulaic but some indelibly great. Then, like everyone else, I moved into the days of what my colleague David Bianculli dubbed Platinum TV, where series like The Sopranos and The Wire and Fleabag aspired to something higher. What both these eras had in common was that their shows were carefully crafted — they had an internal logic, and a tone, that held them together.
In recent years, though, there’s been a proliferation of shows that, possibly obeying some algorithm, care less for coherence than sensation. They lurch among tones, from cuteness to sentimentality to meanness, stirring in random plot twists along the way. Bouncing all over the emotional map, these shows depend on compelling actors and a few memorable scenes to make us overlook their loose construction.
A great example is Alice and Steve, an entertaining but sometimes exasperating six-part British comedy on Hulu about two 50-something best friends who turn on each other after he gets involved with her 26-year-old daughter.
While the premise is juicy, it’s also a tad yucky, and I mainly tuned in because its title characters are played by performers Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords and Nicola Walker, whom I’ve raved up on this show more than once.
The series starts poorly with Steve and Alice going on a cutesy bender after a friend’s funeral. Now, I always hate drunk scenes, which are an invitation to overact. As Clement and Walker bray their lines, we learn that Steve’s a divorced celebrity hair stylist who can’t find a girlfriend while Alice is a clothes designer with a doting younger husband, nicely played by Joel Fry, a sweetie-pie of a teenage son — that’s Tyrese Eaton-Dyce — and, of course, that 26-year-old daughter, Izzy, who has inherited her mother’s willfulness. Played by Yali Topol Margalith, Izzy kickstarts the plot by flirting with Steve. Predictably, he succumbs.
Almost immediately, they think they’re in love. While the weak-willed Steve wants to hide their romance — he knows it’s inappropriate — Izzy just blurts out the facts to her mom. Alice flips. And from hereon out in this series where the women are as alpha as the men are hangdog, Alice drives the action. Betrayed and violently angry, she’ll do whatever it takes to break them up — no matter who gets hurt. Her antics unleash Steve’s own malice. We’re in Beef territory.
At its core, Alice and Steve hinges on the way that platonic friendships are often richer and more powerful than romantic ones. It’s a fascinating subject, which may be why I found the script by Sophie Goodhart so frustrating. I wanted her to dig deeper. While the show’s got some very funny bits — Alice’s sharp-tongued mother is a blast — it’s often annoyingly lax.
If Steve really does the hair of Charli XCX, how come he’s a clueless older guy whose pop culture references are Willie Nelson and Woody Allen? If Izzy truly adores her mother as she claims, why does she keep rubbing her relationship with Steve in her mom’s face? Halfway through, one character nukes the other’s career, but this life-shattering event has no real weight: It’s barely even mentioned for the rest of the series.
That said, Alice and Steve is worth seeing for scenes like the one in which Steve spinelessly sells Izzy out or the lacerating discussion between Alice and her husband when he fully grasps that he adores a woman who views him as a reliable but dull concierge, not a man she likes hanging with. Most touching of all may be the lovely sequence when Alice, wise for once, smooths a romantic crisis between her son and his would-be girlfriend, a pair who are the show’s emblem of hope. For once, we understand why people love her.
While most viewers will find Steve more likable than Alice — the show takes pains not to make him appear predatory or creepy — the role doesn’t give Clement a whole lot to do except play variations on shambolic dread and discomfort. The show gets its galvanizing zing from Walker, a beloved star in England with amazing, luminous eyes. Her Alice is the kind of complicated, volcanic heroine that you don’t see in movies and rarely see on TV, one who shows her apocalyptic rage freely and in many different forms.
At least once in every episode, something would lead me to say, “Man, is this show a mess.” But that wasn’t a deal breaker. I kept watching. After all, life is messy, too.
How to enter your Sporty Spice era.
Getty Images/quantic69/Olga Kurbatova/Anastasiia Zvonary/Photo Illustration by NPR
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Getty Images/quantic69/Olga Kurbatova/Anastasiia Zvonary/Photo Illustration by NPR
Reality dating and professional sports are not as different as you’d think.
Brittany is in her Sporty Spice era – she watched the NBA playoffs, she’s following World Cup games, and she’s watching the New York Liberty play their WNBA season. These games are daily – and so is the reality dating show Love Island. And she noticed that the two formats are not very different at all. Defector.com staff writer and co-owner Kelsey McKinney came to the same conclusion – so the two of them discuss why these games of athleticism and love can bring us together… and why they get valued differently in our culture.
For more episodes on sports and reality TV, check out:
Get rich or die trying: how sports betting is changing our love of the game
Is this the end of reality TV?
The ugly truth of America’s expensive homes
Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.
Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluse
This episode was produced by Liam McBain. It was edited by Neena Pathak. Our Supervising Producer is Cher Vincent. Our Executive Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.
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