As in “Sex and the City,” the fashion featured in “And Just Like That” is its own storyteller. A dress, a color palette, or an accessory becomes an auxiliary narrator, revealing a character’s state of mind or confidence. As such, glimpsing Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) encased in pastel florals and plastic pearls during the second episode of Season 3, “The Rat Race,” was disconcerting.
Next to pals like Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), especially in certain moments to be picked apart shortly, Seema radiates chic without fail. Her style is as solid and stark as she is, favoring designer hardware, monochrome outfits and neutrals.
She’s the least likely to compromise her happiness, too. In the view of expert matchmaker Sydney Cherkov (Cheri Oteri, in a magnificent guest spot), that’s why Seema is alone.
“I need you to do everything I ask you to do, starting with . . . how you dress,” Sydney says, before reading what the silver and gold collars, muted lamé fabrics and python prints in Seema’s Instagram photos subliminally communicate to the observer.
“Metallics read cold,” says Sydney, “And animal prints read . . . predator.”
“So what do you want me in? Pastels?” Seema retorts. Miserably, yes.
Sarita Choudhury and Cynthia Nixon in “And Just Like That” (Craig Blankenhorn/Max)
A few scenes later, Seema meets up with a bargain bin Richard Branson at a restaurant. Following “the Sydney Cherkov way,” she wears a lilac blouse that telegraphs meek, demure energy. He takes this as a green light to order for her and talk about himself nonstop.
Seema pretends to listen attentively until neither she nor we can take it anymore. Pulling off her fake pearls, Seema confesses that her clothing isn’t really her and that it makes her feel like “the Easter bunny’s side piece.” Then she fully reverts to herself, informing the guy that she hates the cabernet and “basic” dessert he ordered.
At this, her date smiles broadly. “I actually really admire your honesty,” he coos. “There’s nothing sexier than an honest woman.” This is also a lie. The man excuses himself from the table, never to return – thank God. That leaves Seema free to be her impeccably clad self. Sydney insists Seema’s style will doom her to eternal singledom. From what we’ve seen, that’s a fine way to live in Manhattan.
Seema cosplaying a garden society matron certainly isn’t the worst vision this show has served. Two episodes into the third season of “And Just Like That,” we’ve already survived some of the show’s highest fashion crimes imaginable. There’s that “head in the clouds” gingham catastrophe, Maryam Keyhani’s showstopping $600-and-change confusion that Carrie wore on a stroll with Seema through Washington Square Park in the premiere.
These choices cross the line dividing baffling and a cry for help. If fashion is a storyteller, what are these eyesores trying to tell us?
Coming in hot at No. 2 in the worst lewks pageant is the neckpiece worn by Nicole Ari Parker’s Lisa Todd Wexley, a chain of rattan spheres resembling a child’s art project. Since LTW and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) send their children to one of Manhattan’s top private schools, it’s possible that one of her kids’ teachers provided supplies from World Market’s needless coffee table centerpiece section.
But even that was merely funny, whereas Carrie’s bonnet made me scream “Why?!” at my TV. I was far from alone. “Carrie and Seema took a walk in the park to discuss Seema’s problems, and not ONE of those problems was, ‘I am currently being seen in public with a woman wearing a ten-gallon hot water bottle on her head,” joked Fug Girl Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan in a Substack post. “Seema got out that great tote and real grown-up lady clothes, and Carrie looks like she’s cosplaying Holly Hobbie.”
Parker claimed responsibility for this terrorist attack on our eyeballs, by the way.
Christopher Jackson and Nicole Ari Parker in “And Just Like That” (Craig Blankenhorn/Max). “Saw the hat, wanted it on my head,” she told USA Today, going on to credit executive producer and showrunner Michael Patrick King for allowing its appearance. King co-signed her saggy sunhat with a description provided to EW that could be interpreted as shade: “It’s perfect, as if some beautiful, fashionable Hindenburg suddenly dropped on her head.”
We kid because we love. We also kid because these choices cross the line dividing baffling and a cry for help. If fashion is a storyteller, what are these eyesores trying to tell us?
There comes a time in everyone’s life, and almost certainly the lives of women, when we abandon the race to stay on trend and cultivate a more lasting style. That could mean anything from comfort and utility to adventure and opulence. Seema’s clothing, she says, is meant to scream “baller” from the moment she steps out of her Mercedes.
But that’s not necessarily how others see it. To her, black, white and taupe are timeless, elegant choices. To the writers behind a painfully accurate “Saturday Night Live” commercial for the non-existent store “Forever 31,” they’re stripes in “the bummer rainbow.”
The parody ad imagines couture for 30-something women as roomy, boxy, drab and sexless. Then again, the fashion industry has always lowered the bar for women older than 30, assuming (somewhat correctly) that we prioritize psychological and physical comfort and practicality. The natural next stop is caftan glam and “fun!” prints beloved by aunts who live for blended drinks. Chico’s, in other words.
Stepping above means spending more on finer tailoring and materials, but wealth doesn’t necessarily immunize people from the otherworldly allure of chunky jewelry. Lisa Todd Wexley proves that in every episode. Most of the time, we don’t notice because she can wear that style, as opposed to the style wearing her.
Aside from that neck wreath made of hippie Christmas ornaments, LTW generally resides in the same area of sartorial consistency as Charlotte and Seema. LTW and Mrs. Harry Goldenblatt spent the second episode cornering an exclusive college consultant, Lois Fingerhood (Kristen Schaal), out of fear that their school’s guidance counselor was leaving their kids behind.
Charlotte is always tightly seamed and belted, while Lisa, a filmmaker, wears bright colors and straddles the line between adventurous pop art flair and polished affluence. Her only flirtation with a fashion don’t in this episode was to don a white pearl-bangled suit that could hold its own in a duet with Dolly Parton.
Then we have Miranda, who is finally settling into a new sexual identity but can’t quite figure out how to date, and that shows up in what she wears. In “The Rat Race,” she flirts with a chatty restaurant server making tableside guacamole, who, like her, hate-watches a reality show called “Bi Bingo.”
The fashion industry has always lowered the bar for women older than 30, assuming (somewhat correctly) that we prioritize psychological and physical comfort and practicality.
This guilty pleasure’s messy contestants don’t know what they want or what they’re doing. The same can be said for Miranda’s wardrobe. In one moment, her clothing says, “I enjoy an orderly office.” In the next, she’s tossing a grey vest that looks like it was woven out of a major depression over a shirt featuring disparate patterns battling for supremacy.
I am a lone voice and certainly not a fashion expert; my style is guided by whether I need to leave the house and, if so, what’s clean. So I reached out to Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago, the costume designers for “And Just Like That,” for their insights. Sadly, they couldn’t get back to me in time for this story.
I also extended requests to the hosts of Prime Video’s “Wear Whatever the F You Want,” famed TV stylists Clinton Kelly and Stacy London, presuming they could illuminate the philosophy behind these, um, let’s call them bold swings. Their open-mindedness is in their show’s title, right? Alas, London was unavailable, and Kelly replied through his publicist that he doesn’t watch “And Just Like That.” Hmm.
Sarita Choudhury in “And Just Like That” (Craig Blankenhorn/Max). Therefore, like every other woman navigating midlife, we’re left to figure out this quandary for ourselves. Fortunately, Patricia Field, the costume designer who made “Sex and the City” a style influencer long before Instagram, left a few breadcrumbs to follow.
“Fashion is art,” Field tells my colleague Mary Elizabeth Williams in a 2023 episode of Salon Talks. “. . .What paintings and fashion have in common, in my mind, is that it tells the story of the time. And it’s either a happy time or it’s an unhappy, depressing time. And you see it in the way people dress.”
By Field’s definition of fashion’s purpose, Carrie’s odd accessories are signs that Carrie has found her groove again.
The hat might have offended some, but otherwise, it’s a silly delight on par with the second season’s pigeon purse and that impractical tutu that defines “Sex and the City.”
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Carrie’s creativity sparks trends. The tutu — it’s a tulle skirt, actually – was Field’s way of presenting an alternative to sweatpants. Women still wear them, which she told Williams she’s happy to see.
Carrie’s clothes speak of her bravery and individuality, for the most part. But they also reveal a weakness for committing to terrible ideas, like a long-distance relationship with Aidan (John Corbett), in which he’s determined the terms of communication.
“The Rat Race” is a nod at Carrie’s discovery that her courtyard’s garden is infested with vermin, forcing her to tear it out and start over. She starts to share those details with Aidan in a text but thinks better of it after his brusque rejection of her recent attempt to initiate phone sex.
He shows up to her Gramercy Park apartment unannounced, which isn’t at all controlling, to let Carrie know that maybe he was freaking out a bit (ya think?) about his communication requirements. After he leaves, she sends a lengthy text about a table that she’s eyeing online. He doesn’t see fit to weigh in beyond offering a thumbs-down emoji.
The table, by the way, is nothing to scream about. Neither are any of the fits Carrie shows up in. The rats really do steal the show . . . well, not quite. Carrie hires a gardener named Adam (Logan Marshall-Green) to redesign her greenspace, drawn to his talent for transforming empty outdoor canvases into verdant works of art.
Adam is a T-shirt and jeans guy whose laid-back style tells us he’s ready to get dirty. That’s enough to raise our curiosity about the surprises waiting offstage in this fashion parade from which we can’t turn away.
“And Just Like That” streams Thursdays on Max.
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