Carrie’s Iconic Sex And The City Tutu Sold For An Eye-Popping Sum

So much of Carrie’s Sex and the City wardrobe seemed too expensive for her writer’s salary. One of her most iconics pieces, however, was well within her budget. The tiered tutu star Sarah Jessica Parker wore in the show’s opening credits only cost $5 — or at least it did in 1997, before she made it famous. The skirt recently went up for auction and sold for more than 10,000 times its original price.

The Tutu’s Origin Story

The newly auctioned tulle tutu came from the archives of stylist and costume designer Patricia Field, according to its listing on Julien’s Auctions. It’s one of five identical tutus that she found in a $5 bin while shopping for Sex and the City in New York’s garment district in 1997. Field saw it as a good option for Carrie’s opening credits sequence because it wasn’t tied to a specific year like the Spring 1998 Marc Jacobs runway dress they used in a never-used version of the credits was.

“I showed it to Sarah Jessica and she loved it!” Field says on the skirt’s certificate of authenticity. “She felt the idea, even though some people on the show didn’t get it right away. We ended up shooting three outfit options for the opening, but this was by far the most original concept.”

The Big Auction

The tutu sold with Sex and the City Season 1 DVDs and the movie, and sure enough, the garment’s special place in TV history drove up the price. Julien’s estimated it would sell for $8,000 to $12,000, but the final sum was much higher. After 24 bids, the tulle skirt sold for $52,000 — a price 10,400 times greater than its original cost. Field could probably have bought everything in that $5 bin and still not even come close to its 2024 auction price.

The tutu’s importance, however, is significant. For Field, it encapsulated what was special about Sex and the City. “The tutu-style skirt was whimsical, adventurous and unexpected — kind of like this show,” she wrote in her 2023 memoir, Pat in the City, per British Vogue. She also recalled telling creator Darren Star, “If this show’s a hit, the opening will be memorable and stay fresh.” And she was right.

The Other Tutus

While Field put her tutu up for auction, at least some of the other ones are still with members of the Sex and the City team. She bought five because Carrie gets splashed by a bus in the credits, and they needed to have multiple on hand to film more than one take. Parker revealed that she still had one in Vogue’s Life in Looks series in February 2022. “A lot of people claim they have the tutu,” she said. “I think Pat [Field] has one, Michael Patrick [King] has one. We just used one. … Where is it, who’s got it? I’ve got it.”