I Don’t Know How She Does It is the title of one of her films, but it’s also a genuine question you’re likely to have after meeting Sarah Jessica Parker. The fashionista of Sex and the City fame has come straight from a parent-teacher conference to discuss her current passion project, which, as fans of her footwear-obsessed SATC character Carrie Bradshaw will find quite fitting, is a line of shoes. The style icon will release the SJP Collection by Sarah Jessica Parker, 25 styles of boots, pumps, and heels as well as two bags and a trench coat, exclusively at Nordstrom on February 28 and will be in LA to present her new collection at The Grove on March 6 from 5-6 p.m.; she will meet customers and sign their SJP purchase throughout the event (as time permits). Parker took a moment from her whirlwind lifestyle to sit down with Haute Living and discuss how she convinced Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus to become her business partner, why there had to be a “Carrie” in the collection and the truth behind the rumors she’ll be taking over for Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
Haute Living: How did the collaboration come about?
Sarah Jessica Parker: I had had some other opportunities [to do collections in the past] and wasn’t quite sure about them, but I still felt there was one idea I hadn’t yet pursued. It was my big dream, and rather bold of me to work with George [Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus]. We first met in 1985, but I got to know him while working on Sex and the City. I was having lunch with friends, all successful businesswomen, who told me to pick up the phone and be brave. [When he answered] I told him it was a long shot, and asked if he would consider producing a shoe collection with me. He told me to be at his office at 9 AM. Before I met with George, I knew I wanted to do a beautiful collection that I could speak of with genuine enthusiasm. I wanted it to be made in Italy, and I wanted it to be affordable, not $1000 shoes. I wound up partnering with someone who wanted the same things I wanted coincidentally, and wonderfully, someone who had a position of reference. [George] arrived in New York at the same time I did. As a young woman taking the cross-town bus, the same things I saw upon my arrival were the same things he saw. I wanted a collection that wasn’t so much ’70s, but where the inspiration [of the ’70s] was a driving force. I wanted to make purple T-straps that could be worn to dinner or work and that could be used as a neutral; I wanted purple to become the new black.Haute Living: Can you walk us through the collection, how each piece directly recalls a time in your life?
Sarah Jessica Parker: The shoes aren’t drastically from many different points in my life. The inspiration was the late ’70s and the mod resistance of New York , Charles Jourdan, Susan Bennis and Warren Edwards and countless others that were prominently a part of the New York shoe business. [I incorporated grosgrain ribbon] because when I was a little girl, I had to wear ribbons in my hair every day. We were required to wear them by our mother, so we took them out of the ribbon drawer and ironed them ourselves. Sitting on the floor with George — where we conduct all our business – I said, ‘George, do you think we could put grosgrain on the back of each shoe?’ He was delighted with the idea and it became our signature, as well as a nice nod to my mother. We picked a beautiful, salmon-y peach color, which is incorporated into every shoe. In a wonderfully crowded shoe market, it’s a nice distinguishing signature.Haute Living: Do you have a favorite piece or pieces in the collection?
Sarah Jessica Parker: I don’t have a favorite. There’s a few that I’ve been inclined to wear more than others. [The collection] is suited to different ages and sizes, it’s cross- generational, but there are certain ones I love. I’m fond of the Carrie, the Tawny in French blue, the Etta in charcoal and dusty rose, the Pola in black and the Wallace in berry and raisin The Alison is a great boot alternative for women who don’t like to wear a traditional heel.Haute Living: There were rumors that you’d be filling Anna Wintour’s shoes at Vogue. Do you think the rumors were just the media’s wishful thinking that life might imitate art?
Sarah Jessica Parker: [That rumor] started because we had lunch a couple weeks ago. We were waiting at the elevator bank, and I was saying goodbye. We do have lunch occasionally. I was in no way positioning for that job, and she’s not going anywhere, thank goodness. There are about 1001 people far better suited than me who are equipped to take on such a massive, important role, but I’m definitely not the one.Read our full interview with Sarah Jessica, learn more about her well-heeled style and see her full shoe colleciton in the upcoming issue of Haute Living Magazine Los Angeles.
Category: News
Sarah Jessica Parker is thought of as one of the most fashionable people on the planet — but she doesn’t see herself that way. “No no, I don’t identify that way,” she told Cosmopolitan.com Wednesday in New York at the launch of her line of shoes for Nordstrom, the SJP Collection, which hits stores Friday. “I’m not — and I know this might sound crazy — a particularly vain person. I’m sort of embarrassed by that introspection. And thinking about myself makes me feel kind of like a narcissist. But, I’m aware that there is an identification outside that people have about me — good or bad — and I’m comfortable with it. It’s not for me to resent what is projected; I’ve been part and parcel of that.”
She continued, “I don’t shop that much, but if I do it it’s online. I think about shopping and I hope to shop and yet I really don’t get to. And there’s not a specific brand either, it’s so irregular that I get to shop but it’s not a common occurrence.”
Though she wouldn’t answer any questions about the rumored Sex and the City 3 movie, she did address Aidan and Big, sort of. Who would Sarah Jessica Parker choose between the two? “Ohhhhh, I would never say because the next thing you know I’d have to deal with that answer for the rest of my life,” she laughed.
One might think that Sarah Jessica Parker’s love affair with shoes started with her infamous Sex and the City character, Carrie Bradshaw, but not so explains Parker at the Tuesday preview of her new SJP collection with George Malkemus and Nordstrom. “George and I had met long before I played Carrie Bradshaw,” she says. “George came out to Los Angeles to a store called Madeleine Gallay that was on Sunset Plaza, in 1985. I didn’t have two freaking nickels to rub together, but I came to this trunk show, and I ordered six pair of shoes. I must have done it, literally, on a layaway or on an American Express, it’s the same card I have today. George and Manolo [Blahnik] had swatches and styles, and we put together six pairs of shoes.”
That shared enthusiasm is what brought Parker and Malkemus together again on their 30-piece line of single-sole heels, espadrilles, flats, and thongs and handbags and trenches, which hits Nordstrom stores on February 28. Here, VF Daily talks to the twosome.
VF Daily: Why do the shoes all have names?
Sarah Jessica Parker: If you were a lady and a consumer of shoes, you would see that it’s uncommon for a shoe not to have a name. I think it’s nice to connect with the shoe, but I would agonize over every name. There were a lot of shoes to be named, and I took it extremely seriously.
George Malkemus: Carrie was probably the hardest to come up with, because it’s probably the most famous name for many, many, many women for many, many years.
VF Daily: There seems to be a 70s influence.
SJP: I think people are expecting one thing, or those people who didn’t really remember it sort of think of it as the disco era, but really, it was that single sole and those colors. It was the Maud Frizon and the Charles Jourdan, and those wonderfully flat colors, eggplant and aubergine, eggplant and grape, asparagus and teal. The simpler something is, the harder it is to produce it really well, but that’s what we wanted to do. George has this incredible shoemaker in Tuscany, a third-generation shoemaker who was equally excited to revisit this idea, too, because he knew that period so well.
VF Daily: What happened to those six pairs of shoes you designed with George and Manolo?
SJP: They were later stolen, those shoes, a bunch of them were stolen. All my luggage was stolen when I was traveling; it was very, very sad. From the time I was on my own at 17, it was just peering into windows, imagining, and spending my time on that crosstown bus, looking in the windows of Bonwit Teller, Bendel’s, Bennis/Edwards, Ferragamo, and Maud Frizon. You know what I said to my daughters yesterday? We were spending the day together, and we went to the grocery store. I said, “Have you window shopped?” and they said, “No, what is window shopping?” I said, “Window shopping is shopping with your imagination, so we can see everything.”
VF Daily: Has Manolo seen the finished products?
Malkemus: Well, I wouldn’t put anything past him, but you know what, it’s meant to be two different worlds. As I said, this is a different woman. This is a woman who doesn’t go into Bergdorf Goodman and spend $20,000 on shoes in an afternoon.
SJP: Maybe he’s secretly following @SJPCollection on Instagram.
VF Daily: It’s been 10 years since Sex and the City went off the air; did you realize that this show still has this cultural pull?
SJP: I think for so long I was completely ignorant of any relationship an audience may or may not have with the show. Forgive me for repeating it, but I did not understand—I think I was so entrenched in the work, and because I was producing the show, and acting in it, and by the end I had a new child, my first child, I did not understand this significance culturally. It wasn’t until the last episode aired, and I was sitting on a couch with my husband at home, and I was watching CNN, and a crawl went by, and it said, “Carrie ended up with Big,” or something like this. I was like, “They can run Carrie, like, without any point of reference around it,” and that was the first time I ever understood that there was an audience that was larger than the people we were shooting with every day. You know, the crowds had grown on the street, and I recognized that, but I never read reviews, I don’t read press, I don’t want to pay attention to the peripheral chitchat.
Malkemus: We have busloads of women—you know, there’s a Sex and the City tour—and they stop in front of Manolo Blahnik, and they’ll get out, and they’ll be these lovely women from London, and they just have to have the Sex and the City shoe. They will say, “I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought I was going to spend this kind of money on shoes, but I’ve got to have this, because I’m getting married.” At first I would think, You really want to get married in the shoe that Carrie got married in, but didn’t get married? She didn’t even get married in that, but she did have the shoe in a fantastic apartment on Fifth Avenue.
VF Daily: And today, people still stop in front of the Perry Street house that Carrie Bradshaw lived in.
SJP: Because we live around the corner from that, and I’m nearing the southwest corner of Perry Street, I try to make a diagonal beeline.
Malkemus: But the phenomenal thing about women who are like, “I’ve got to have a cosmo because of Sex and the City.” It’s like, really? Is that what you really want to drink?
SJP: It’s a nice drink I’ve only recently discovered. It’s actually delicious.
VF Daily: Really?
SJP: Yeah, they’re quite good. I had one last night with a nice amount of lemon in it, and it was delicious, and, of course, the bartender was like, “Naturally.” I was like, “No, I really don’t drink cosmopolitans.” I’ve only recently, like, in the very recent past, even considered ordering one. I felt so embarrassed doing it. I’m not a drinker, so I don’t know what else to order, but it was delicious.
VF Daily: Michael Patrick King recently said that a third Sex and the City movie could be possible.
SJP: I’m glad he finally at least said something. It’s off my back!
VF Daily: Is anyone working on this—writing a script, are there talks?
SJP: No, nothing, or at least nothing beyond how we taunt the public with various quotes.
It’s been a decade since the ladies of Sex and the City last kicked off their stilettos. But even after all these years; a pair of blockbuster films; and a very real re-examination of what it means to live, date, and shop in New York, few women define our relationship with shoes like Sarah Jessica Parker’s Manolo-sporting Carrie Bradshaw. This week, the actress will launch a line of her very own with (who else?) Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus. The wares are simple, single-soled, everyday pumps, flats, and sandals that will retail in the $300 range at Nordstrom starting February 28. No sky-high spikes or flame-embellished mules here. Just Italian-crafted (save the Spanish-made espadrilles), warm-hued basics meant for the women looking for a taste of Carrie’s sartorial adventures. We sat down with Parker and Malkemus to talk about why color is the new neutral, what it takes to design the perfect—and not too cheap, not too pricey—heel, and how the SJP shoe philosophy has evolved over the years.
How did the collection come about?
Sarah Jessica Parker: The opportunities had been orbiting and I kept having a hard time saying yes—and that puzzled me. I would honestly lay in bed at night and think to myself, “What is the problem?” And I went to lunch one day with a group of successful women, and they were encouraging me to do a shoe line. They said, “Well, what’s the problem? You have all this money and all these opportunities.” And I said, “It’s just not about that, obviously. Do you know what? To be honest, what I would really love is to be a partner with George.” I didn’t know him super well, but we had spent the past twelve years working together on Sex and the City and I certainly admired his business and the way he conducted his relationship with Pat Field and me. And they said, “Why don’t you call him?” And I said, “You know what? Screw it. I’m just going to be brave. Because the worst he can say is ‘no.’”George Malkemus: Which I didn’t!
SJP: And so began this thrilling conversation.
Can you tell me a bit about the concept behind the collection?
SJP: We wanted to revisit the single sole—where did it go? We found, much to our delight, that our reference points are the same, and we had an idea of this particular woman in our head. She wears color as a neutral and doesn’t think black totally is necessary. “Appropriate” footwear was not something that we were interested in. And we thought of all those great shoemakers from the late seventies, all those wonderful shoe stores…that’s how it all began. George found us a great shoemaker in Tuscany.GM: Third generation.
SJP: We found a great person in Spain to make our espadrilles—to really make the shoes the way we wanted at a price point I felt comfortable with.
The shoes are an investment, but they’re not unobtainable.
GM: That’s the key word! Investment. That’s the thing we want to have. If you have a pump from Sarah Jessica’s collection, five years from now that pump will still be in our collection in many different colorways.SJP: You shouldn’t feel regretful when you look in your closet and think, “Boy, that feels out of fashion.”
Well, these shoes are simple. There’s nothing super-trendy about them.
SJP: That wouldn’t be something I would do well.GM: And I don’t think that’s what I would want us to do. I take personal offense when a woman spends huge amounts of money, and then after a certain amount of time, feels like she can’t wear it. Or, if she walks into a party and someone says, “Oh, my God! You wore those last wedding when so-and-so got married for the first time! And now they’re getting married for the second time and you’re still wearing the same shoes…and you’re still not married! Because you bought those shoes!”
SJP: Wow! What an amazing leap to those connections!
So who was this woman you were envisioning?
SJP: The idea in my head is this woman who’s walking down the streets of Florence and she has a bag with a little piece of hardware and she’s in a jean with a simple flare. She’s wearing a Henley. It’s that late seventies, very clean, simple, superchic—but not better than you or me. Just simply getting dressed in the morning and being herself. That’s what I learned from my mother. And that’s what I learned from my grandmother. Extremely simple. Beautiful. Sexy. Feminine shoe, bag, coat.GM: Not overdone. It’s like the perfect white shirt or the perfect little black dress. It’s so easy to talk about those things, but they’re the hardest things to make. To make a beautiful, simple shoe is not easy, and [Sarah Jessica] got that.
What were the challenges in designing this collection?
GM: To make shoes at the price she wanted was challenging. It’s so lovely to have a partner who cares about every little thing that we do. Ten million women watched Sex and the City. You hear people say, “God, I love Carrie! That’s me!” And I’m like, “You live in Iowa. How is that you?” And she says, “You know what? It is me in some way.” That’s the woman Sarah Jessica wants to make shoes for.Has what you want in a shoe changed since the Sex and the City days?
SJP: Well, the character I played had a very—some might say it was a reckless relationship with shoes. Financially, she wasn’t particularly careful or prudent. My tastes have changed. But if I saw a beautiful shoe ten or fifteen years ago, I’m inclined to say that today I would still think, “My God. That’s a beautiful shoe.” What I wear has changed because if I’m able, I take my children to school every day, and I dress for the weather. I was never as committed a consumer as Carrie. She will buy anything. She will buy a trendy shoe.What are you excited about as you move forward with this project?
SJP: I’m nervous. I’m nervous that George has invested so much time and effort and money into this project. Will it prove to be worth it? Will people respond to these shoes? I’m excited to have the opportunity, but I’m extremely nervous. I’m going to five cities to talk about the shoes, and this is what I will hear: “Are you sure I can wear this to work?” And I’ll say, “Why does this make you any less capable in the office than your black pump?” Who told us these things? No one’s at fault, but it’s a real adjustment to say to someone, “Absolutely, you can wear that to your meeting. Absolutely, you can wear that to your parent-teacher conference or for a wedding.”GM: Sarah Jessica is saying, “It’s OK!”
SJP: I’m not going to hold them hostage!
You’re giving them options.
SJP: Yes. It’s been interesting, too. There are women who wouldn’t feel confident wearing this teal pump. Women want to wear the teal. They’re just slightly afraid that somehow it diminishes them. They think the shoes aren’t as smart or as serious. Women just really need to know that it is all right if they want to. We’ll always have this in black for them. But why not French navy?
Hey everybody! Interbridge is reporting that Sarah Jessica is set to appear on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on March 5th, 2014. So mark your calendars and set your DVR early so you won’t miss her appearance!
THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW
We 3/5: Sarah Jessica Parker, Theresa Caputo
An Up-Close Look at SJP’s New Shoe Line!
Sarah Jessica Parker sat down with ET Online last week (February 14) to discuss her new SJP Collection. You can check out the article and video interview below. This was released last Friday, but I just became aware of it. I figured I’d still post it anyways. Enjoy!
Elle Creative Director Joe Zee recently sat down with Sarah Jessica Parker and her shoe collection partner George Malkemus — CEO of Manolo Blahnik — at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York City to talk about her highly anticipated new shoe line launching exclusively at Nordstrom, where the fashionable star gave ET a coveted look at her “Carrie” show, which is based on her beloved Sex and the City character.
“It crossed my mind that people might kind of have a connection in their head of what the shoe should be if we were going to be doing those,” she said about the pressure to design a “Carrie” shoe that would live up to fan expectations. “But I think one can not produce like that. If you’re gonna be result-oriented, you’re going to get yourself into trouble. Why I chose to call this one Carrie is because I wanted her to be thought of as a neutral. There was really something unconventional about a purple being a neutral, that it appeared ladylike, but it was really sexy … that there was something subversive and naughty and sexy, but it was elegant and it could be considered appropriate — so I thought that was sort of the conflict with Carrie.”
Parker also stressed that it was important to her that her shoes be both high quality and actually affordable for women.
“How do we get these shoes to be made in Tuscany, and still be affordable for a lot of women, and what is that space, and is there a space for a shoe between $250 and high $400s?” she explained about the challenges of designing her shoe collection. “And it was a wonderful experience for me, and to see where you can arrive with those limitations.”
But though the 48-year-old fashionista is obviously passionate about shoes, she admitted that people are actually sometimes disappointed when they see her personal closet!
“The funny thing about it is relative to a lot of people in the rest of this country, I have a fairly small closet,” she surprisingly revealed. “When people come over they’re sort of disappointed to see how tiny my closet is. And I have a significant amount of shoes, but the truth is, I haven’t really bought a lot of them. A lot of them are from work. … I don’t wear them that much. But I love to see them, and they remind me of moments and wonderful pasts that I feel privileged to have had.”
Check out the video to see a few of Parker’s gorgeous shoes from her collection up-close, plus why her four-year-old daughter Loretta trying on her high heels for the first time was both a charming and scary moment!
Parker’s SJP Collection will launch exclusively at Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com on February 28.
Over the past week, EW has been reporting on the chances of your favorite defunct TV shows — Chuck, Firefly, Rome, Scrubs, etc. — seeing the light of day again.
On the topic of TV shows getting a second life, it’s impossible not to look to Sex and the City, the original model for Community fans’ cheer of “six seasons and a movie.” After six fashionable years of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte’s adventures on TV, the iconic HBO comedy series found new life — twice — with two big-screen adaptations, both written and directed by series exec producer Michael Patrick King.
During our chat with King about the revival chances of his other HBO show, The Comeback, the conversation of course veered into Sex territory. (How could it not?) The big question: could a third Sex and the City movie ever get off the ground? Back in January, Sarah Jessica Parker told InStyle that she believed there was one last chapter to tell. Well, King agrees.
“The great gift or riches or luck is that I worked on two shows that were so full that they spilled over into people’s lives and the characters were rounded enough that you could still wonder where they are,” King says, adding that Sex and the City is still thriving on TV, especially as alternative programming (HBO marathoned the series on Super Bowl Sunday).
Acknowledging Parker’s comments on a third film, King explains, “Sarah Jessica and I both know what that final chapter is. That doesn’t mean it will or should be told, but I do think there’s one story left. Whether it ever happens is a whole other situation. But there’s four girls, and those girls are still in my mind. There are other stories to tell and characters that haven’t even been written yet.”
The show went off the air exactly 10 years ago, in February 2004, delivering series-high ratings for the emotional finale. Four years later, Sex and the City hit movie theaters and raked in $152 million at the domestic box office, with critical reviews split right down the middle. Sex and the City 2 opened with significantly less ballyhoo in 2010 and made $95 million at home, with the Rotten Tomatoes score at just 15%. If it seemed as though the series was on its last legs, that would largely be the accurate assumption — but it depends who you’re asking. EW’s Owen Gleiberman sees a future. The series still lives online, boasting 14 million devotees on Facebook and plenty of meme life among the Tumblr generation. The clamor for another movie might not be as loud as it once was, but rest assured, it’s still there. Just like The Carrie Diaries.
“It’s a very interesting balance of zeitgeist and letting go and coming back and figuring out if you’re done or you’re not done. I listen to people a lot, actually,” says King. “What I do know is that there’s interest, but with interest comes non-interest. It’s all really about the stories, and if you actually think you have something left to say that would make it exciting and worthwhile for the fans’ time, that’s really the question. Not whether you can get away with it, not whether anybody will buy it, not whether you can make money on it. It’s really like, is there enough or more to say that would justify people risking seeing their favorite characters again? And I think there’s one chapter left.”
The first and perhaps biggest hurdle would be convincing all the women to return, and as it stands, it’s just Nixon who seemed to be uninterested about the idea (although that was in 2012, and it sounds like things may have changed). Parker, as we know, believes in a third story; Davis is excited at the possibility, and Cattrall appears to be on board as well. With attitudes in the affirmative, the question falls to whether enough of the moving parts can assemble to get a greenlight for a second sequel.
King is realistic that a third Sex and the City venture may in fact never come to fruition, but fans should be pleased to know that he and SJP are on the same page when it comes to finishing the saga with one final story. Although, it should be clear, though King listens to the rumblings about SATC‘s place in the zeitgeist, he’s not exactly flocking to Tumblr or Twitter (where accounts are devoted to the plots of a third movie) to take suggestions.
“Oh, like I would ever look at the Internet!” jokes King. “I also sometimes go into the kitchen and just turn on the stove and put my hand on it to see if that hurts still.”
Sarah Jessica Parker is coming to Seattle
Nordstrom has just announced that SJP will be in the Emerald City Wednesday, March 5 at the downtown Seattle store for the launch of her new shoe, handbag and coat line – the SJP Collection.
We reported earlier that the SJP Collection was coming to Nordstrom, but there had only been whispers that Carrie herself would be here! So mark your calendars, and take the day off if need be.
When: Weds. March 5 from 4:30-5:30pm
Where: Nordstrom (downtown Seattle)
What: SJP will be meeting with customers and signing their SJP Collection purchases as time permits.
The Collection is launching exclusively at Nordstrom stores on February 28. A heavily shoe-based line, the SJP Collection also boasts three styles of handbags and two coats in various colors. Prices range from $195 to $495, so definitely come credit card in hand.
Here’s a tip – if you really want to meet SJP, we suggest buying an item from the collection beforehand, and bringing it and your receipt to the store with you on the 5th. And come early! She’ll only be signing items from the Collection that customers have already bought.
