Let's Get Nerdy About Styling
Patricia Field is a genius
After last week’s post I felt I was maybe too bitchy about the current state of fashion. Mainstream designers like those listed in the screenshots — Michael Kors, Saint Laurent, Gucci — have been playing it safe and boring for a while. Like the Marvel movies of clothing. And lumping those lumbering behemoths in with people on the fringes of fashion is unfair. So, this week I thought I’d tell you where I go to get excited about clothes.
First, foremost, and shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone reading, Carrie Bradshaw a.k.a. Patricia Field1. No one puts an outfit together like Carrie/Patricia. My favourite outfits are from the first half of Sex and the City when Carrie’s wardrobe was much more experimental and usually consisted of a mix of luxury and thrifted. Google something like “Carrie Bradshaw’s worst outfits” and you’ll find a list of my absolute favourite outfits. In fact, I’ll do that for you. From Buzzfeed’s 30 Of Carrie Bradshaw's Most Ridiculous Outfits:
People seem to really hate that belt around her bare waist, like take-it-personally kind of hate. I love this outfit. I’ve recreated this outfit several times in my life. And I refuse to spend one second trying to decide why other people are so put off by the belt.
This is not my personal style, but I still love it. Don’t hate the outfit just because you wouldn’t have the guts to wear it! Who wears a Chanel top with knee-length tie-dye trousers?? That, my friends, is called styling.
The question isn’t “how can I dress like Carrie?” The question is “what would Carrie do with my wardrobe?”
Let’s compare Charlotte to Carrie. Charlotte wears WASPy fashion in the exact way a WASPy designer would want it worn, with the appropriate accessories and jewellery, and in appropriate colours. Without the WASPy rules of fashion, and the money to follow them, Charlotte would be a bit lost. Carrie could wear the exact same pieces as Charlotte and she would look completely different because she’s not following any kind of prescription. She can wear anything and look like Carrie because of how she styles her outfits. Hence the question, “what would Carrie do with my wardrobe?”
I could literally, probably, write an entire book about Carrie’s style and how Patricia Field’s genius was the key to the success of the show, but I’ll stop for now to talk about other, non-fictional people. Consider Carrie the standard against which I judge the following entities to include them in the same post as her.
@oldmanrepeller on Instagram is an account dedicated to the outfits styled by Man Repeller, mostly it’s founder who is the closest I’ve ever seen to a real life Carrie Bradshaw style-wise. The site is sadly defunct, but I visit this IG account whenever I need some inspiration in working with the wardrobe I have.
I promise you that the only think awkward or weird about wearing a shirt backwards is getting it buttoned up. Thanks to this woman I spent 2015 playing around with how to wear my favourite blue button-up and I honestly think about those outfits still.
Jemima Kirke played Jessa Johansson on Girls and has been in some more prestige TV series lately. I like Jesse’s style sure, but I love Jemima’s personal style. On her Instagram she seems casual in her real life and when she has an even or photoshoot I love her playfulness. I’d like to say I like to dress up with her in mind, but as I lead a casual life I mostly like seeing how she styles clothes meant to get wrinkles and crumbs on them.
@watchingnewyork is the Instagram account of a New York-based street style photographer so credit her goes both to his eye for styling and to New Yorkers for looking so fucking cool. I particularly appreciate the range of styles and humans that he features on his account. Many of the people he photographs have their own accounts dedicated to their style, but my favourites are actually the ones that either don’t have Instagram or who use their account for more personal life stuff. It is both comforting and inspiring that there are so many people out there with fantastic personal style who don’t feel the need to share it with the internet.
To concludes today’s hot mushrooms I’ll leave you with a smattering of posts from watchingnewyork that I’ve saved:
Thanks for reading this week and happy styling!
The header photo this week is just me from August 2016 :)
Pat Field does NOT do the costumes for And Just Like That. While those clothes are lovely, they are NOT Carrie.