How And Just Like That… gave us one of TV’s most bizarre fashion moments ever

From Intercourse and the Metropolis to its sequel, heroine Carrie Bradshaw has at all times pushed the boat out along with her vogue. However her newest selection of headwear has shocked viewers like by no means earlier than.

There was different information unfolding all over the world on 20 Could, 2024, however in a single nook of the web, there was just one subject of dialog: what was that on Sarah Jessica Parker’s head?

Parker had been snapped filming as Carrie Bradshaw for the third season of And Simply Like That… in New York with an extremely outsized floppy, brown and white gingham bonnet with two straps hanging down. “Is {that a} pillow case?” one person commented after Parker additionally posted an image of her carrying the offending merchandise on her Instagram account, which ended up on international information websites. “Sporting a diaper bag as a hat, intelligent!” posted one other, whereas there have been different less-than-favourable comparisons to Strawberry Shortcake dolls from the Eighties and Little Miss Muffett, sitting on her tuffet. “It is altogether unhinged,” a journalist from The Cut wrote, summing up the whole outfit, through which the hat was paired with a striped colored Ossie Clark costume from 1973 and Dr Scholl’s sandals.

Now a yr later, the opening episode of the Intercourse and the Metropolis sequel collection that includes the enormous headwear has screened – and followers are much more bemused. “Carrie lady…” one viewer wrote on X. “What the hell is that this hat.” One other added: “I noticed the Carrie hat. I’m traumatized.” “I can get behind the wildest of Carrie’s vogue selections however this cover cowl of a hat is really unhinged,” commented one other individual, whereas others sprang to its defence: “Carrie’s ENORMOUS hat within the first episode of And Simply Like That season 3 is insane I adore it lol.”

Lastly seeing the scene in context, we now know that Carrie wasn’t carrying the hat for a prank or as fancy costume, however maybe essentially the most essentially the most surprising factor about all of it is that the merchandise goes by completely unmentioned by Carrie’s buddy Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) – and different passers-by – as they eat their ice-cream on a stroll by way of Washington Sq. Park. There’s not even a single drive-by diss from the famously vocal New York taxi drivers. “This lady is so positive, so assured,” says Seema, in reference to Carrie, however she’s speaking about her relaxed, on-off relationship with Aidan Shaw (John Corbett), fairly than her alarming sartorial alternatives.

“Carrie Bradshaw has at all times pushed the envelope with hats,” says Lauren Garroni of vogue/popular culture podcast and Instagram account, Every Outfit. “However that is by far, essentially the most insane factor she’s ever worn.” Her Each Outfit companion Chelsea Fairless – each are self-titled “Intercourse and the Metropolis historians” – agrees: “To put on a hat of this magnitude on the streets of New York borders on efficiency artwork.”

“It is laborious to think about the thought course of behind the costume design,” explains Garroni, “aside from the truth that Carrie is an eccentric dresser. Maybe they wished to up the ante fashion-wise this season? However I do not assume that they have been going for a particular look, as a result of nobody clothes like this. It feels a bit Strawberry Shortcake or Holly Hobbie-adjacent, however these are such summary references.”

Some digging from detectives from the style world on the time revealed that the hat in query was a €450 (£379) piece referred to as Head within the Clouds from the artist Maryam Keyhani, which she notes on her website is: “just for the courageous and delicate”. Keyhani instructed The Guardian that she felt “pure satisfaction and pleasure” in Carrie carrying the hat on display, including “she seems to be like she’s utterly disregarding what mainstream tradition tells her – her interior world is way more vital than that of the surface world”. Maybe as a response to The Minimize’s criticism, Keyhani added: “It is the liberty to look completely unhinged if you wish to – and as girls, at a sure age we really do not care what individuals consider us – so long as we really feel proper about it!” 

So how did certainly one of Carrie’s most controversial seems to be come into fruition? The entire outfit is the artistic imaginative and prescient of And Simply Like That…’s costume designers Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago. And whereas it’d appear like the outcomes of random rummage by way of a thrift retailer; the pair drew from Carrie’s life and the deliberate occasions of collection three to assemble her wardrobe selections.

“There’s a main plot level that closely influenced Carrie’s model this season,” Rogers tells the BBC, aware of spoilers for the 12-part collection. The primary massive information for Carrie is that she has determined to maneuver from being a sex-memoir writer right into a historic romance novelist – “romantasy”, her editor begs her to pivot to, to be on pattern within the publishing world – so maybe she’s trying to Jane Austen or Brontë sister bonnets for inspiration in her new novel-writing period. 

The opposite shift in her life is that Carrie begins to spend time in Aidan’s rural farmhouse in Virginia, because the couple navigate their sophisticated relationship standing throughout two completely different places with very completely different cultures. In a later episode she buys some old style native robes in a glance she dubs “Little Home On The Carrie”. Both consciously or unconsciously, Carrie seems to be enjoying round with a brand new id by way of the medium that she is aware of greatest: vogue – and to see if the cap suits.

As for the hat itself, Rogers says “I like the designer of that hat, Maryam Keyhani. Danny met her on Instagram,”, explaining they sourced the Head within the Clouds piece collectively. It was a co-sign from Parker, she provides: “SJ liked fairly just a few items of Maryam’s that we did not have scenes for and we’d preserve attempting to get them in. SJ is so collaborative and brings an unimaginable power into her fittings.”

“I noticed that hat, and I wished it on my head instantly,” Parker told Glamour. “My feeling is, once I see one thing like that, Who would not need that on their head? And might’t we discover a purpose for it? Typically you need to venture a necessity the place it would not exist… It did not appear that it might intrude in any method on the scene and even in truth be a factor. You possibly can have instructed me that hat was three by 4. I might’ve felt the identical.”

There has beforehand been hat-drama on the set of And Simply Like That… when showrunner Michael Patrick King banned a hat that Rogers present in Paris’s Clignancourt flea market – and which Parker additionally adored – from the finale of collection one, citing that he was anxious it might cowl an excessive amount of of the actor’s face. This, according to the And Just Like That… The Documentary, earned him the title of “hat killer” by Rogers and Santiago. Nevertheless, Rogers says that Patrick King had no points with the large bonnet of season three: “I consider that MPK has lived down his previous moniker as a hat killer with that one.”

Rogers provides that the hat additionally expresses a deeper which means for her; vogue as resistance. “[Keyhani and I] have turn into shut as a result of she is a real artist and free spirit. She provides me hope that someday there will likely be a brighter day on this nation as a result of individuals like her exist and resist.”

Requested whether or not she was shocked by the response of the general public to the look, Rogers says that one of many pitfalls about filming exterior in one of many busiest cities within the nation, is that the seems to be are uncovered to the general public earlier than the present has even wrapped filming. “Any exterior scene will get method an excessive amount of publicity,” she says.

When Garroni and Fairless posted the photograph on their Instagram account on the time it first went viral, “the vibe within the feedback was overwhelmingly damaging,” says Fairless. However, she provides: “That is to be anticipated. Avant-garde vogue is not designed to enchantment to the lots”. “If something,” Garroni provides, “it is designed to repulse the lots.” 

The OTT and sometimes extremely divisive vogue is in fact why many viewers like to tune in to And Simply Like That… simply as they did Intercourse and the Metropolis earlier than it, when costume designer Patricia Area concocted equally out-there outfits whose spirit Rogers and Danny Santiago have usually adopted. “Do not take your self so severely,” Area instructed the BBC again in 2023, of the perpetual armchair critics of outrageous on-screen vogue. “Take pleasure in your self! Take pleasure in life! Attempt a bit originality!”

And if some seems to be do not land, that is the value And Simply Like That… has to pay for enjoying about with the extra excessive finish of excessive vogue, Fairless says: “And Simply Like That… is purposely outlandish, though it varies from look to look. We might have seen some very eccentric outfits on the present, however we have additionally seen Carrie costume extra conservatively than she ever has.  

“I believe some followers need her to put on a tasteful, bias-cut costume with a pair of strappy sandals without end. They do not care concerning the seems to be that problem conventional notions of ‘good style’. Whereas different individuals, like Lauren and myself, stay for the extra controversial outfits.” Gadgets that may embrace Carrie’s JW Anderson Pigeon purse from season two, or the Moncler duvet-ballgown she sported throughout a New York blizzard.

“The style has at all times been hit and miss,” Garroni provides. “However you do not get the hits with out taking massive dangers, and that is what additionally results in the misses. Carrie’s look has at all times been about juxtaposing ‘reverse’ kinds of clothes, and that is by no means with out danger.” As for whether or not giant milkmaid bonnets will likely be en vogue for Summer time 2025? “No disrespect to Carrie Bradshaw, however I do not assume that the majority girls wish to put on large gingham hats!” affirms Garroni. 

“If it turns into a pattern, I am going to eat my phrases.” Or maybe extra fittingly, her hat.