Titled “A Vogue Idea,” the episode sees Carrie become a Vogue contributor and receive her first assignment: a piece about trending accessories. She doesn’t get the Vogue tone quite right, and her editor Enid (played by Candice Bergen) has to remind her that she’s not writing for her dating column, so there’s no need to equate a trending handbag to an investment banker—or any other trending boyfriend-type. True to Carrie form, she spirals, retreating with her new friend and Vogue staffer Julian to his office, where she gets drunk at Vogue with an afternoon martini. The episode includes a visit to the magazine’s much-mythologized closet.
There had been other shows—who can forget The Nanny?—that leaned heavily on fashion, but the norm then was to leverage it as a tool for character development. The chord that Sex and the City struck within the industry, up until this point, at least, was it was a show about fashion that was about its power players, but the clothes. Isn’t that what we all like about what we do, anyways: the clothes?! With this episode, that formula changed, as SATC folded Vogue into its lore. Of course, this would not have happened had the show not been wildly popular among fashion folk. Hollywood had never seemed to get fashion right, but now, in going to the source, SATC cemented itself as the show to watch and proved that fashion was something people wanted to see on TV.
As you will see as this timeline of fashion in the 21st century develops, the late 2000s saw an explosion of depictions of fashion—and Vogue—in the mainstream media, all of which all came post-SATC. What an in-vogue Vogue idea this episode was.—J.C.U.
An American View: The New York Fashion Community Rallies Together Post-9/11
On September 12, 2001, the Style.com and Vogue teams gathered at 4 Times Square to think up ways to support those most affected by the attacks of the day before. One of the initiatives to come out of that brainstorm was the Fashion for America campaign, a joint effort by Vogue and the CFDA to raise money for the Twin Towers Fund. Within the industry, emerging talents were impacted by the 9/11; to assist them, Vogue and Style.com teamed up to host An American View, a group show for emerging designers who had not presented their spring 2002 collections, with the attacks occurring as they did in the midst of the spring 2002 fashion week in New York. “The sentiment that we were encouraging and that all the participating designers were on board with was that this was about giving you visibility, this was about camaraderie, this was the industry coming together,” said Meredeith Melling, reflecting back on the event from a distance of 20 years. Read more of what she had to say.—L.B.P.
Zac Posen is Back in the Spotlight With Gap—Here, We Look Back at His Runway Debut
How hot a ticket was Zac Posen’s first independent show? Hot enough to get major models to walk the runway, Manolo Blahnik to do the shoes and first daughter Barbara Bush to sit in the front row. Even more impressively, the 21-year-old New Yorker lived up to the hype, delivering a strong, if not terribly commercial, message.
