Why I Still Love Sex and The City

Bonjour fashion lovers,

There are loves we talk about all the time, and then there are those loves so deeply woven into our lives that we almost forget to truly tell their story, because they have become part of our DNA.

For me, Sex and the City is one of them.

Anyone who follows me on Instagram knows this very well. My love for Carrie Bradshaw, for the girls, for New York, for those impossible and wonderful outfits, for those questions typed on a laptop like little fashion-existential confessions, has never been a secret. I constantly share scenes, quotes, looks, iconic moments, and references that only a true fashion lover can understand instantly. And yet, I realized that I had never really written about them. Never an article entirely my own.

Never a Cappuccino Time dedicated to Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha.

Maybe because Sex and the City, for me, is not simply a TV series. It is a comfort zone. It is one of those emotional places I return to when I need lightness, irony, friendship, fashion, romantic chaos, and that wonderful, slightly crazy and slightly reassuring feeling that life can be complicated and fabulous at the same time.

I know almost every line by heart. I know the pauses, the looks, the dramatic entrances, the wrong men, the right shoes, the outfits that should not have worked on paper and instead became history. I know Carrie’s walk, Miranda’s judgmental sarcasm, Charlotte’s stubborn romanticism, Samantha’s absolute freedom. I know the apartments, the brunches, the restaurants, the streets, the bags, the coats, the newspaper columns, the cigarettes, the Cosmopolitans, the disappointments, the reconciliations, the phone calls, the silences, the exaggerations.

I grew up with them. Not in the most literal sense, but in a deeper one. I grew up with their imaginary world, with their way of telling women’s stories, with their idea of friendship, with that New York that completely conquered me. I grew up watching four women speak, without filters, about love, sex, work, money, desire, loneliness, independence, mistakes, ambition, and that eternal question that sooner or later crosses every woman’s life: what do we really want?

For a girl in love with fashion, magazines, words, cities, and women with strong personalities, Carrie Bradshaw was not just a character. She was a symbol. Imperfect, of course. Sometimes selfish, sometimes childish, sometimes wonderfully absurd, but still a symbol.

Carrie made writing glamorous. How much I loved, and still love, watching her write on her laptop in that tiny New York apartment, near the window, wearing comfortable looks designed to become instantly iconic. She turned fashion into a language and made New York feel like a fifth friend. She taught many of us that Manolos could be unbeatable allies in moments of emotional defeat, and that an outfit was never just an outfit to put on and nothing more.

Naturally, today I look at Sex and the City with different eyes. The world has changed. I have changed. The way we talk about women, relationships, diversity, money, bodies, privilege, love, freedom, and independence has changed. Some scenes today feel dated and ridiculous. Some jokes no longer work and seem anachronistic. Certain attitudes clearly belong to another era. But that is fine, and it is right to see it.

I no longer watch Sex and the City with the eyes of the girl who was discovering that world for the first time. I watch it with the eyes of a woman who has lived, loved, lost, chosen, made mistakes, worked, changed her mind, and understood that life is never as perfectly written as a television episode, even when the outfit is unforgettable and the shoes are iconic.

Today I see Carrie differently. I love her, but I also question her. She amuses me, but sometimes she irritates me. I admire her freedom, but I see her contradictions. I understand her romantic chaos, but I also recognize her emotional immaturity. I still adore her closet, the result of a perfect and revolutionary mix of high fashion, pieces found in vintage markets, and eccentric clothes.

And perhaps this is the most beautiful part. Growing up with a character also means being able to love her without idealizing her. The same goes for the others.

Miranda, who perhaps, when we were younger, could seem too serious, too hard, too rational, now feels almost prophetic. She was ambitious, tired, independent, lucid, often uncomfortable precisely because she was not trying to be cute at all costs. Today I understand her much more than I did back then, and seeing her character so distorted in And Just Like That disappointed me deeply.

Charlotte, with her Upper East Side manners, her romanticism, her love of rituals and of the idea of a life built with grace, is not simply the naive dreamer. She is a woman who believes in beauty, family, hope, and the possibility of choosing softness without being weak.

And Samantha, well, Samantha remains Samantha. Free, excessive, theatrical, loyal, brave, impossible not to love. She was not simply provocative. She was a woman who owned her body, her desires, her age, her choices, and her freedom without asking anyone for permission.

Then there is Carrie. Always Carrie. Carrie with her column, which later becomes a successful book, her tiny apartment she can never quite let go of, her dream wardrobe, how could she afford all those fantastic pieces on a freelance writer’s salary?, her dramatic questions, her romantic disasters, her cigarettes, her Manolos, her curls, her vintage pieces, her absurd ability to make even a broken heart look like a fashion editorial. Carrie is not perfect, and I say: thank goodness. Because perfection, let’s be honest, has never been interesting. Style is interesting. Contradictions are interesting. Women who make mistakes, fall, and get back up are interesting.

Maybe this is one of the reasons Sex and the City still works for me. Not because it is a perfect series, but because it carries the energy of a world where women could be complicated, not always politically correct, not always wise, not always fair, not always admirable, but real.

And then, let’s say it clearly: the true love story of Sex and the City was never the men. No, no. Not Mr. Big. Not Aidan. Not Berger. Not Aleksandr Petrovsky. Not the weddings, not the breakups, not the dramatic phone calls, not the forgotten shoes, not the kisses under the snow, not the run toward Paris.

The true love story was always friendship, and that is what gets me every time. And when Charlotte says it on the night Carrie leaves for Paris, this deserves a Cappuccino Time of its own, I am moved to tears. That table with four women sitting together, talking, judging each other, supporting each other, teasing each other, telling uncomfortable truths, laughing, eating, starting over, is the heart of the series. Not the men. Maybe not even the outfits. Friendship.

And perhaps this is why, after all these years, I keep going back to them. Because they feel familiar. Because I know what I will find. Because sometimes, after a heavy day, all I need is Carrie typing a question on her computer, Samantha saying something scandalously liberating, Miranda bringing everyone back down to earth, Charlotte continuing to believe in love, and New York doing what New York does best: making us believe, at least for half an hour, that everything is still possible.

For me, Sex and the City is a ritual. It is a mood. It is a small emotional apartment I can step back into whenever I want.

It is fashion, yes. But it is also memory. It is a series from the past, yes. But it continues to ask questions that are not old at all.

How do we love without losing ourselves? How do we remain friends while becoming different women? How do we survive the wrong choices, the wrong men, the wrong days and, sometimes, even the wrong outfits?

And above all: can a woman be romantic, independent, ironic, vulnerable, ambitious, dramatic, stylish, wrong, right, and still profoundly herself? Carrie and the girls answered that question long before many of us had the courage to ask it.

Maybe that is why I still love them: because they made female friendship a destination, they turned the city into a character, the outfit into a confession, and a column into a mirror.

Because every time I rewatch them, I am not only looking at Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha, but at a small piece of the girl I was, the woman I have become, and the fashion lover I have always been, deep down.

Emanuela Formoso – Founder & Editor, The Fashion Lover. Always fashion, always black. Always Paris.