“And Just Like That” is back for Season 2, and bringing more of the fabulous fashion fans have come to expect from its stylish cast of characters.
The force behind the Max show’s maximalist wardrobe? Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago, the protégés of original “Sex and the City” costume designer Patricia Field — who’ll briefly return later this season to dress Kim Cattrall for her much-anticipated cameo.
But Field and Cattrall aren’t the only franchise fixtures coming back in a big way; Century 21, one of Carrie Bradshaw’s favorite high-fashion haunts, finally reopened its downtown flagship last month, and fittingly tapped Rogers and Santiago to curate a collection of looks inspired by the show’s key players to mark the occasion.
“I feel like I’ve spent half my life in this store with Pat,” Rogers tells Pvnew Style, comparing the experience of shopping at Century 21 to a “treasure hunt.”
“You’ll find that one thing that nobody else has,” Santiago chimed in, pointing to his favorite “Sex and the City”-era score — a green bustled Vivienne Westwood miniskirt worn by Carrie in Season 4 — as a prime example.
And the new episodes of “And Just Like That” are equally sprinkled with one-of-a-kind fashion finds. Below, Rogers and Santiago share the stories behind a few of their favorites.
Carrie’s wedding dress returns
Santiago: “It was written in the script that that was what she was going to end up wearing [to the Met Gala], so we knew that we had to get it. We didn’t know if it still existed, and we didn’t know what the condition of it was going to be. So Molly reached out to Vivienne Westwood, because it’s been quite a few years.”
Rogers: “I didn’t reach out – I had to stalk them, because they kept stalling. I think they were having to, you know, repair it.”
Santiago: “But it showed up, and it was in good condition, and [Parker] fit right into it! It hardly needed anything.”
Rogers: “Well, you wanted to transform it so it wasn’t exactly the same dress, but everybody would recognize it.”
Santiago: “I wanted to take the bottom part off — because it’s two tiers — and make it really short. And at one point we talked about maybe having a boot underneath, like a thigh-high boot with stones all over it. We were playing around with ideas, [because] we wanted there to be something she could incorporate with the wedding gown.”
Santiago: “That cape was originally a ballgown, something I got on The Real Real. It was a beautiful color, and the fabric was so great. So we took the bodice off and used the whole skirt to make it. And then we dyed the gloves to match. The color was exactly the same as the bird [headpiece], so I think she would’ve been inspired by the color and shape and thought she could put the two together and it would be Met-worthy.
“That’s the original bird — it’s very fragile, over 100 years old. It’s from New York Vintage, and they have it a vault.”
Rogers: “When the ‘Sex and the City’ movie came out, there was a Saudi princess who wanted it buy it for $250,000, but Shannon [Hoey, co-founder of New York Vintage] said no. I loved at the time that it was something borrowed and something blue. And they wrote dialogue for it!”
Charlotte’s S&M-meets-equestrian ensemble
Rogers: “There’s a lot of squawking on the internet [about her latex Met Gala look]. They’re not having it, which is a shame! I love her in latex.”
Santiago: “We didn’t want to make it so traditional period; we wanted to do something that’s a little more modern. We were thinking Bettie Page, giving it a little fetish-y, ’50s [flair]. She’s got such a great hourglass silhouette to dress, so we cinched her in this shiny latex, gave her the latex glove and the patent boot to go with it. She even had a little riding crop!”
Rogers: “I have a good video of her spanking MPK [showrunner Michael Patrick King].”
Lisa’s traffic-stopping Valentino couture
Santiago: “Molly and I were invited by Valentino to come to the couture show, and there was a beautiful black-and-white gown that had a white caged headpiece. [But] we thought red would be a great color on LTW [Lisa Todd Wexley, played by Nicole Ari Parker]; it’s a very strong, bold color, and she wears color so well. So Molly asked them if they would remake it for the Met scene.
“Because of the [scene] with her crossing the street, we thought, let’s make an extended train. That train was about 10 or 12 feet long — quite long. That was something we requested not knowing if they were going to do it or not. But the Italians being as amazing as they are, they put one together! And the headpiece is actually very, very light.”
Rogers: “It’s kind of uncomfortable, though.”
Santiago: “There’s a lot of balancing you have to do once you have it on.”
Carrie’s pigeon purse
Rogers: “A bird always ends up somewhere — on the head [or otherwise]. It’s really fun to be in the sitting room and say, ‘What is that bird gonna go with?’ And [Parker] killed that scene — she worked it. Putting it on her head, taking a piece of gum out of it … that wasn’t scripted!”
Carrie’s hat that sparked a fight on set
Rogers: “If you watched the documentary, you know we were fighting tooth and nail to use this [in Season 1]. [Parker] fell in love with it because it was absolutely in ruins. The discussion shut down the set; everybody ran, scared to death. She was committed to it. But hats are tricky, and lighting [people] and directors, they hate them.
“[King] didn’t know we were going to bring it out again [for Season 2]. But when he saw it and he saw us, he was like, ‘Revenge is sweet.'”
Carrie’s New York Times sweatshirt
Rogers: “There’s a honey hole we know of here that has the most incredible sweatshirts, and I’m not telling anybody where it is. She was originally in something more slip-like until that came into the room. There’s already lots of people online looking for it. The New York Times should pump them out!”
Carrie’s shoe-shopping spree
Santiago: “There were easily 40 pairs of shoes we looked it, and I think we narrowed it down to maybe 30 or 25 for the actual scene. We wanted sparkle, we wanted leather, we wanted color, we wanted variety. Molly found a wildcard — this Loewe shoe with a big sculptural plastic balloon on top.”
Rogers: “I thought I was gonna get slapped. It’s a very non-Carrie shoe.”
Santiago: “It’s beautiful, it’s sculptural, it’s kind of a great art object. But we didn’t know how she was going to react to it.”
Rogers: “I’m glad it made it in, because Sarah Jessica is so good with her props.”
