Sarah Jessica Parker Revisits Her—and Carrie’s!—Life in Looks

Both my daughter's hands

went to their mouths and they were like

Mama! You're on the cover of Vogue?

[gentle sophisticated music]

Hi Vogue.

This is Sarah Jessica Parker,

and this is a fraction of my life in looks.

Every single thing on me is from a vintage store,

with the exception of whatever is in my hair

and apologies for that.

I did it that day. [laughs]

I'm sure there was a diffuser involved and some Tenax.

We can talk about that on another...

My masterclass and hair from 19...

What would this be?

85, is it 86, maybe?

I don't recognize this person.

I don't understand the sunglasses in particular.

I think they're awful on me.

I think once again, it's not the fault of the glasses.

Large, the earrings are a mystery to me.

I don't know if I saw that in a movie from 1947.

The period at the end of the sentence

is the the peace necklace.

She showed up in a lot.

I mean, I didn't, I didn't take her off

and I used to sign everything,

if somebody asked me for my signature,

I always signed [giggles]

I always signed Wage peace, love Sarah Jessica.

Anyway, I still have that necklace.

I think there is a whole interesting conversation

about influence

and a collective kind of thing that happens

without influence.

And I'd been shopping at thrift shops for a long time,

just on my own, because it was a necessity.

You know, Madonna and Cindy Lauper hadn't surfaced,

but I was wearing big rayon dresses from the forties.

That's just what I did.

So this dress is a Donna Karen dress, that I know...

Once again, I'm not making excuses, but I,

I would never wear this dress.

I would never wear this dress

but I am wearing this dress.

And I know that that's me,

and I cannot pretend that it's anybody else.

It's a perfectly constructed dress.

The idea of it was amazing.

It is Carrie in that moment.

But even that, I don't think is entirely Carrie.

I think there's another dress,

that is as body conscious as this one,

but feels more so Carrie.

This dress is sort of like it's own...

To me, it's like it's own universe

and it moves around, it's just very interesting to me.

And the shoes are probably Manolo is my guess.

Typically, yes.

Yes. I'm familiar with this outfit.

What can I tell you?

What do you wanna know?

'Cause it's not me, really, this is Carrie.

A lot of people claim they have the tutu.

I think Pat has one.

Michael Patrick has one.

We just used one, so my guess is that

that sequence required a splash,

that there were probably four or five or six.

These were Jimmy Choo shoes, I am pretty confident.

This was a tank top, you know, a nothing tank top.

We didn't do a lot of takes.

We rehearsed it, we timed it, as you do.

You kind of get all the pieces together,

without adding the liquid.

That's kinda how you do it and then you go for it.

And I think we got it done probably in one or two takes.

When you're doing a scene

where you're getting splashed

or you're falling into say, a lake in Central Park,

you have to find something that has multiples.

But it can't just simply be multiples,

it has to be artistically, sartorially,

it has to fit a lot of criteria.

So my guess is that Pat and I, as we always did,

talked about a bunch of choices.

And at the end of the day,

this is where we landed.

Tank top, tutu and heels.

So there were a lot of these,

which explains why people all claim to have.

I don't think I have, do I have a tutu?

I do.

So I have, I have it.

Should have just cut to the chase.

Where is it? Who's got it?

I've got it.

Turn the page. You bored yet?

All the flower pins are in my possession.

They went to, and just like that,

they went back into Carrie's closet.

There are pins, there are non-pins.

There are flowers on a bobby pin

and I have some of my own

and I still have a little drawer in my own closet,

that's just sentimental.

No, I wear them sometimes or I'll stick 'em in my hair.

I'll stick 'em on a bun.

I'm very happy with that.

Mr. De Loreta made this for me.

I love this dress and yes, I wouldn't wear feathers today.

My favorite memory is himself,

always so invested and always cared

and always took care of details,

but also just always smelled good, looked good.

Knew how to be in a salon,

very old fashioned ideas about a client and a customer.

And this was Laura Mercier makeup.

These were Fred Leighton earrings,

which were such a big deal for me to borrow.

But what I remember so much about this night

was that after the awards were over,

when we came back and people were gathered and eating

and Laura Mercier said to me, 24 hour guarantee,

before I left, she was always like, 24 hour guarantee.

And I was like, she's right.

It was hours and hours and hours and hours later.

And my makeup was still like...

I love this. I think I've seen criticism of it.

Enjoy, have fun.

This was a SAG Award event, I think.

This was Prada.

You get to borrow something you like,

you think it speaks to you at a moment, in a place,

in a time, for an event.

And you wear it and maybe some people

think you don't look amazing,

and that's certainly their right.

I think the difference is

that we all walk out the door, every single day.

Most of us try to make a choice that makes us feel good

or like ourselves or appropriate for where we're going,

or who we're gonna be with.

We don't walk up to each other and say things like,

Ugh, awful.

So what's so funny to me about this

is how much chatter it provokes

'cause I'm like, but it's just a thing.

It's just an outfit that happened

because that person liked it.

So what's the point of the criticism?

We're all just making an attempt every day,

to offer ourselves up to another person.

I can tell you everything that I can know about this outfit.

Okay. That is not a real Aramis bag, just so you know.

Pat had a person, and she was like, Do you want one?

I can you one.

No, I don't really, not...

I don't need one.

But this isn't real.

The dress is real.

The dress is real and it's Juicy Couture.

Super pregnant.

Did our very best to...

Look how big that bag is.

I mean, that bag had one job to do and did it very poorly.

Maybe if it was a real Aramis bag,

it would've done a better job.

Colors I typically wouldn't wear.

Very bold.

I didn't really get to dress that much as myself

when I was pregnant,

because I was working so much of the time

when I was pregnant.

But when I was in my own life pregnant,

I mostly wore overalls.

This cover.

I don't even think I'm fit to comment on it.

It's a cover of Vogue.

Steve Mazel.

Well, we were post September 11th, so we were all different.

I had a child.

I probably was just living more civilian.

I was probably attempting to live.

You know, I'd taken a little bit of time off

and I mean, I'm a New Yorker,

so life was like a New Yorker's, you know?

Gristedes, et cetera.

This last shot of Sex and the City.

I remember this day so well,

I brought that scarf from home, Pat loved it.

That shoe we wore a lot in a bunch of silhouettes.

That's a Manolo red, sort of.

Almost like it's barely red,

it's like vermilion slash going into tomato.

Carrie was a much more courageous dresser than I am.

Much more fevered relationship with fashion.

Much more indulgent.

You know, I kind of am much more of an observer,

most of the time.

And then occasionally, I get to dip in and participate.

I wouldn't have been so brave.

I wouldn't have shown so much,

but that's not a judgment.

It's just different.

I just wanna say that this day,

I didn't read this last scene

until I was on my way to the set.

'Cause I did not know,

I did not wanna know how the show ended.

And only when I read the last page, did I see John called,

and that was the first time the name was revealed to me.

I'm gonna say six minutes before they called action.

This is Annie Leibovitz, for sure.

And I'll tell you why I know,

Annie always likes hair that way.

I'm much more inclined to simply fit into

what has been in her brain, 'cause she does so much prep.

She really goes into a space ahead of time.

She's there for two or three days.

She has such specific ideas about pillows and fabric

and lights and stacks and layers and dimension.

We feel it is our job

to figure out where we fit into the tableau.

And I say that with respect and admiration

and a huge amount of personal pride,

that I have had so many experiences with her.

And I work as hard now as I did the first time.

I won't stop trying.

I almost can't talk about it.

I love this so much.

It's been made clear to me that not everybody

felt the same way about this dress,

which maybe makes me feel even more affection for it.

The bird, I'm not gonna repeat the bird story.

I think everybody knows the bird story

but the conversation was this bird.

I saw it and I thought it was magnificent.

What was so crazy to me about this

were the colors, the colors are,

especially in person, you can't tell.

We knew how we felt about it,

And like many things, it didn't have,

we couldn't throw ourselves in front of the court

and make a really reasoned argument.

We had every possibility of losing the case.

Didn't share or discuss

with Michael Patrick King in advance,

which was, you know not fair,

it was a little bit of an ambush.

And when I came to the set, he was like,

Why is there a bird on your head?

And I was like, Look at the bird.

You would've made the same decision.

Of course, you know, he argued against

and he wins a lot, for good reason.

There's a whole thing that's happening always, in his head.

He knows stuff that I don't know, often,

which I don't wanna know.

But we won,

and then of course he put it in.

I think later on she was like, I had a bird on my head!

Zac Posen made this dress for the ballet.

Love this dress.

Absolutely, this fabric,

you can't do right by it in a picture,

had a switch inside it.

Love these shoes,

these shoes are called Rogue, SJP Collection.

They're a beautiful shoe.

They're a comfortable shoe.

They're gorgeous and they're naughty.

See, there's this color, Rish,

and there's this color, Candy or fuschia.

I just love, I loved everything about it.

I loved that night and it was for the ballet,

so that was a big deal,

for the New York City Ballet.

Annie Leibovitz, my husband and I two years ago,

shooting for Vogue,

to talk about Plaza Suite,

which I'm running to rehearsals in about 15 minutes,

to go rehearse.

This is inside the Hudson Theater.

I think the oldest theater on Broadway, redone.

Annie at her fastest though.

This was a fast shoot, inside that theater

and my handsome husband.

Yay.

You know, what's Carrie shuffling around in?

During the darkest days of the pandemic,

when it didn't matter and she had to run to the deli,

or run to Smiler's, or grab something

and you know, what did she throw on her feet,

that she could wear with a tube sock or a woolen sock,

or tights or naked or bare, whatever.

This was written because of one of the writer's

own personal stories about when they were smoking

and trying not to be seen smoking,

they put actually on a hoodie, zipped all the way up,

with the hood super-tight around their face

and they wore Playtex kitchen dish gloves

and big sunglasses,

'cause they didn't wanna be seen by their neighbors,

but they would only walk around smoking.

And I was like, I get what you want and I,

but it's not a hoodie and this, it's something else.

So I love this Batsheva gingham house coat

and I was like, Well, let's do this version of that.

And then we found these three vintage scarves

and I just started piling, piling, piling.

Oh, this is like, yesterday,

Fernando and Laura for Oscar de la Renta.

And this dress has such an interesting, quick story,

because this pink wasn't there initially,

there was other toule,

and as we had these couple of fittings,

this evolved into this, all the embroidery,

the sequins were all done out of the country.

It was a big deal and he did it so fast.

And I just think it's a perfect dress.

Absolutely perfect, I loved it.

This is is me going to work, downtown.

These are all my own clothes from my closet.

This is an old dress that I found at a thrift shop.

It's kind of basically like a Durandal,

and I love it because I can wear anything underneath it.

This is an old shirt that I got from a thrift shop

that I love but I cut off the collar,

'cause it's too high for me.

This is a purchase of mine, this is Ulla Johnson,

and I love this coat so freaking much.

These are socks I've had for a really long time,

that Gucci gave me years ago,

but I just keep wearing 'em.

This is our shoe, our SJP collection shoe,

that's file or grosgrain, the entire body is,

and it's called Lady and she's a classic,

she's an evergreen.

I like wearing whatever I like.

And I tend to not worry too much about

if it matches and the mask is not, not okay.

[book slaps]

I love this cover and I can't tell you why, specifically,

except I'll just say one thing about it,

which I think is so interesting is that

when Sergio and Anna sent it over,

early, a couple days before,

well what we thought was gonna be it's proper release.

I showed it to my daughters,

which I never do anything like that.

You know, magazines aren't as much a part of their life

as might have been, when I was their age.

I was like, Girls, I have to show you something.

And I pulled it out,

and both my daughter's hands went to their mouths

and they were like,

Mama! You're on the cover of Vogue?

I didn't know that they were aware of Vogue mag...

They live in New York, they walk to school every day.

They see all the kiosks, you know.

They're in the world, of course they know,

we don't sit around and talk about that.

So that was very touching to me.

I was so tickled by how it was so innocent

and unknowing and not ruined.

Then my daughter Tabitha says, which, this blew my mind.

She said, Mama, there's no writing on that magazine.

Usually it's so busy.

I had not said a word.

I was like...

I thought that was so interesting that she recognized,

which to me, was the thing that was so extraordinary

about this cover was it's not concerned.

It's all ego in the best possible way, to me.

Meaning everybody on the editorial side was like,

Yeah, we don't have to put anything else here.

This is not about me.

This is about their own ability to create image

and know what to do on a cover of a magazine,

which I don't know what to do,

but it's striking in its absolute bareness.

That's what I think is one of the amazing things.

And the photographer was amazing that day,

and it was just an amazing shoot,

shoved in the middle of a crazy schedule.

And I feel super, super lucky.

Looks a lot different than it used to.

Each peace, I'm sure I did like a thing too, right?

All sorts of new and old in here.

And that was just a [smacks lips]

little bit of my life in looks.

Oh, thanks Vogue.

See you next time.

Really? You want me?

You're gonna have me back?

[gentle sophisticated music]