Patricia Field changed our world with Carrie Bradshaw's style in Sex and the City as loyal fans watched anxiously to see what Carrie and the girls would wear each week. Pat has been an icon of the downtown fashion scene for years and an advocate for LGBT youth. We had the chance to catch up with Pat to talk about her huge sale of Sex and the City wares and other fab items at the NYC consignment store INA, the opening of her new store, and more.
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Cannon: Pat, you have so much going on! Opening a new store and selling memorabilia from Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, and Ugly Betty at INA, the most fab Consignment shop in the city. You finally cleaned out your closet!
Patricia Field: I did, I sure did.
C: So, tell us about what inspired this and where you got all the pieces from?
P: You know, Ina is an old friend of mine, and when we finished the Sex and the City series, I called Ina and told her there was a lot of stuff here. She came and bought whatever was left that hadn’t been taken by any of the actors and she ran a big sale and it was sensational. The line was around the block! Actually, it was Ina’s idea to do a sale.
Ina: She was cleaning out her stuff. She didn’t want a lot of it and didn’t want to move it anymore. She was just ready to let go.
P: I’m moving into a much smaller place.
C: I would have loved to have seen this process!
P: Really, I’m not a hoarder, but over the eight years that I was there, I didn’t realize how much [I had collected]! So Ina came over one day, thank god, and she went into my main closet and we started pulling. She came a few times and we went step by step through my place — my coat closet, my jewelry, whatever. There were so many things I didn’t even recognize that were in boxes.
I: She'd say, "Where did this come from? I never saw this before!" [We ended up with] just under a thousand items in inventory, and that doesn’t include all these little ziplocks of jewels.
C: And you’ve been friends for… many, many years.
P: Since when, early 90s?
I: Yeah, I knew you because I used to have a showroom, and you had your store on 8th Street. But we were not friends, I just knew who she was.
P: We became friends after Ina opened up her shop and I used to go there a lot for my work. You know, that famous fur coat of Carrie's came from Ina.
I: From the first season, that was a vintage fur!
C: I always find it so great how real old New Yorkers always support each other and find each other and I think you both have been such great friends and collaborators for such a long time.
P: Yes, you know New York is really a small place and it's got many, many, many facets, but it's all a little crammed together, so if you are here long enough, we get to know everybody.
C: Well, I grew up in New York so I was going to your store on 8th Street since I was in Xavier High School. I was always obsessed.
I: We are a bunch of little villages you know. And even if you don’t know certain people, you just see them in a restaurant or walking down the street or walking their dog, going to the market...you know it's lovely.
P: that’s why we live here.
I: That’s right.
P: It’s a big little city.
C: You have changed the face of fashion and styling and for the most part you’ve really set the standard with Sex and the City. Tell us about what it was like working and creating these iconic looks that are so legendary that they are going to live on forever.
P: I think that part of the Sex and the City story was good timing. I think the timing was intrinsic, not only in the look, but in the script and in the characters — and timing is very important. I came into Sex and the City after so many years in business in New York. It wasn’t like I was a newcomer, I started doing films and TV in the mid-80s.
I had worked with Sarah Jessica Parker before and we had established a relationship of trust and respect, which was one of the reasons that I was asked to do Sex and the City. She’s very, very different than me and my taste but she would always be ready to listen and look at anything. She didn’t accept all of it, but she was always open, she never turned anything down without checking it out, and that was really important because she was the vehicle. She encouraged me to make these twists because she found it interesting, amusing, and she responded to it, and so I was able to really travel that road with her. And then, I think what happened was that the other three girls (Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis) started seeing...
C: ...the response the show and fashion had on everyone!
P: Yeah, then they kind of got it — because I didn’t know them until we met! But very quickly they saw that it took two to tango! Yes, I was the stylist, but I couldn’t have done it without Sarah Jessica, and vise versa. It was like we created Carrie together. I’ve done many jobs after that and before that and it's really important if you have that collaboration and understanding and you have fun together.
The clothing was out there and then the writers started writing for the fashion. Originally, it wasn’t conceived as a fashion show, it was just about these four girls in the city. As the fashion started clicking, the writers Darren Star and Michael Patrick King saw the reaction and they kind of went with it, and then they stared writing fashion jokes and so on. So it was a very good run, it was a great experience!
C: And it made Manolo a household name.
P: Yes, Manolo.
C: I think one of my favorite stories was when David and Phillipe Blond came to one of your parties and Phillipe was wearing the red dress with the spikes, and I guess he walked into the party and you were like, that’s the dress I want for Samantha!
P: I need that dress!
C: And you were trying to get it off his back, I think.
P: Actually, I did get it off his back because the one made for me didn’t have the spiky shoulders, so they ripped apart the shoulders and put it on the new one for Samantha. And it's really funny because when Kim (Cattrall) saw the dress, she [didn't like it at first] but everybody was telling her to wear the dress. She wore it in that number where they were all singing and it became one of those iconic dresses.
Via: Patricia Field Talks Style and The City: The Cannon Canon