Quick, what's your favorite Sex and the City moment involving Carrie Bradshaw and her adored shoe collection?
Was it the time she got mugged, and the mugger specifically demanded her Manolo Blahniks? "Somebody stop him!" Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, cried out. "He took my strappy sandals!"
Or perhaps it was the time another pair of Manolos were stolen because, annoyingly, the hostess at a baby shower demanded that everyone take off their shoes.
Or maybe it was the time Carrie realised she'd spent so much on shoes, she couldn't afford a down payment on an apartment. "I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes," she moaned.
The Sex and the City television series ended in 2004, but Sarah Jessica Parker still has a lot more shoes to live in.
The actor is launching her own shoe line, called SJP, which will also include handbags, at American retailer Nordstrom, and Parker's business partner is George Malkemus, the chief executive of Manolo Blahnik.
Parker sat down earlier in February to talk about the new project and fashion.
Q: So how did this all start?
A: Well, I was very kindly being offered a lot of opportunities in the shoe category and I kept rejecting them. And I couldn't figure out why. And more importantly my agents couldn't figure out why ... And I was sitting with some women friends of mine and they said to me, "What is it?" And I said, "Well, I know it's not going to be the shoe that I want it to be." And I said that really my dream partner is George Malkemus. And they said, "Have you asked him?"
Q: How did you choose which shoe in your new line to call "Carrie"?
A: There were other Carries. And it kept not feeling right. But this shoe (a T-strap heeled number in purple) is kind of a contradiction. Because there is something very feminine and ladylike about this shoe, but the purple is a little subversive. The purple is the person that chose not to wear the appropriate thing to work. And I feel that's what Carrie was.
Q: You have become so associated with fashion. How did that all happen?
A: You know, I think that I played a character for a very long time who had an enormous amount of affection for fashion, she had this kind of relationship we'd never seen portrayed or depicted or illustrated on-screen - big or little screen, really. And also fashion was just starting to emerge at that time as a separate sort of character in New York. I think it was a confluence of playing that person, also loving (fashion) myself, and watching luxury and vintage just start to rise.
You know when we first started shooting the show, and we hadn't been on the air yet, nobody would loan us anything. We had a very meagre budget ... we were pulling mostly from consignment, some rental houses, borrowing from friends, or from emerging designers that nobody knew about except for (costume designer) Pat (Field).
And the show went on the air, and someone was talking about fashion, and looking at fashion in a way that had never happened before. And the business was just starting to shift. Luxury - we weren't talking about luxury before. It had not been spoken of outside the industry itself ... And nobody had dressed (like Carrie). Nobody was wearing an old raggedy beat-up fur coat that was 40 bucks with a Fendi baguette. It was just a whole new way of thinking about fashion, and once again, that timing.
Q: So speaking of timing - where do you stand on a third (Sex and the City) movie?
A: There is no conversation about doing a third movie. As (director/writer) Michael (Patrick King) has said, I think recently, he and I both know what the last part of the story is. Just us. None of the other women know. But I trust Michael's sense of timing. I don't know that the time will ever be right to tell it. So there are no plans. But I do know, and Michael knows, what that third story would be. And it's small, but mighty.
