The SATC Stylist Revealed The Best (& Worst) Character To Dress

Most people who know and adore Carrie Bradshaw will also recognise the name Patricia Field, the stylist and costume designer who put Bradshaw in a tulle tutu and made her a fashion icon. The 82-year-old is responsible for all the covetable looks in Sex And The City (SATC), The Devil Wears Prada and the first season of Emily In Paris, where she worked as a consultant. In 2023, a few decades after she began her work in fashion, Field is releasing her memoir titled Pat In The City: My Life Of Fashion, Style And Breaking All The Rules.

In this memoir, Field shares what it was like working on the set of SATC, fondly describing the show as “an in-law that just won’t get out of your life.” The stylist also names Sarah Jessica Parker (who played Carrie) as “the person I’ve enjoyed dressing the most” and references her character multiple times throughout the book.

The stylist and designer credited Parker’s contribution in helping to create the look of Carrie. “Sarah went on to ban scrunchies and butterfly hair clips as well, not only from her costumes, but those of all the other characters too, and made a plea to the makeup artists to forgo foundation, seeing it as another vestige of a bygone era,” Field shares. And for every half-hour episode, she created nearly 50 full outfits with fittings for Bradshaw “turning into eight-hour-long marathons, but they were true collaborations and we were all up for it.”

And who could forget the other iconic characters from SATC, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon, who Field also talks about in the book. As per the Daily Mail, the costumer writes that she wanted to ensure Samantha Jones (Cattrall) was dressed in clothes “so soft and supple you wanted to reach through the TV screen to touch her. Sometimes she was a goddess in metallics, a bright, shiny and reflective object of desire.”

Of the many characters that Field styled, there were also some she wasn’t best pleased with. Bradshaw’s long term suitor Aidan Shaw wore turquoise jewellery with suede jackets and fitted shirts on the show. In an interview with The Guardian, she said, “He [John Corbett] had just done some sapless show and he wanted to repeat the look. I was like, ‘OK, this is gonna be tricky.’”

Field also writes that she created the outfits in SATC to reflect the concept at the core of the show. “None of the characters were stereotypes of women along the slut/prude spectrum, but instead were juggling a complex mix of careers, sexual desires, and real friendships,” she explains. She also goes on to say that they had no idea “how hugely important SATC would become to the fashion world. And the fashion world had no idea what was about to hit it.”

Pat In The City: My Life Of Fashion, Style And Breaking All The Rules is released worldwide on Feb. 14.