How do you re-create the world-renowned wardrobe of one of pop culture's most famous fashionistas, Carrie Bradshaw, for a new audience and a new era? You don't. You "pre-create" it. That's how Eric Daman, costume designer for The Carrie Diaries, characterizes his challenge. After all, the Carrie embodied by AnnaSophia Robb in the new CW show is a high school junior in 1980s suburban Connecticut, not a thirtysomething writer in early '00s Manhattan.
So comparing their closets is really apples and oranges — or Manolos and Mias. As a teen, Carrie's quirky yet sophisticated style has not yet fully developed, so she isn't strutting around in stilettos and wearing hot pants to a barbecue. Or "having her bra strap show off with a Fendi baguette on her shoulder," says Daman, who has deep knowledge of TV's seminal singleton: He assisted costume designer Patricia Field on Seasons 2, 3 and 4 of Sex and the City.
Still, the task of tricking out a teenage Carrie was intimidating, even for someone with experience — and success — clothing trendy TV high schoolers (Daman was the material maestro behind the outfits for Blair et al on Gossip Girl). "There was an enormous amount of pressure," he says. "I really wanted to give homage to an icon we know, but I feel exhilarated and honored that the fashion torch has been passed on to me."
So far, so stylish, fashion editors say. "Now that Gossip Girl is off, everyone's looking for this to fill the void, especially on the fashion front," says Seventeen fashion director Gina Kelly. Daman "did such a great job of nailing all the nuances of how we dressed in the '80s without it looking too costume-y." (Kelly grew up during the decade — in Connecticut, no less.)
Does the series have the potential to make an impact on the closets of girls — and even women? "For sure," Kelly says.
For one thing, young Carrie's preppy, floral printed pants and two-toned oxfords have seen a real-world renaissance of late. "There are '80s influences that are still exciting and fun," says Lucky fashion director Anne Keane. "In that way, it's a happy coincidence."
Keane's concern is the very nature of The Carrie Diaries: looking backward. "What was so fun about watching (Sex and the City) is that you'd see these trends that were so of-the-moment," she says. "It's going to be hard to capture the same sort of feeling."
"They definitely have some challenges, but that's not to say they're not going to be able to do it," Keane adds.
Indeed, clothes define Carrie so much that part of the fun of the show will be watching her wardrobe evolve as she grows up and establishes her idiosyncratic identity, Daman says. "The more she goes to New York, the more we see her style bloom" — quite literally, as that mini flower she pinned to her lime leopard cardigan in the Diaries premiere pops into the dinner-plate-sized posy we remember from Sex. "We watch her adapt and become the Carrie Bradshaw we expect her to be."
So Daman has built in fashion foreshadowing, laying little "Easter eggs," as he calls them, that will eventually hatch into Carrie's sartorial signatures: The simple gold C pendant she wears in Diaries is, of course, a precursor to the flashy nameplate necklace she — and flocks of her fans — brandished during Sex's reign. As Diaries progresses, "we'll see, in a very nuanced way, that New York is seeping into her Connecticut life."
Her customized Mark Cross handbag is a gateway to the luxury lines she covets in Sex. At first, "I wanted it to be a big label that had monetary value, like Chanel. I came around to thinking it shouldn't be something so ostentatious," Daman. So he chose a bag with "quiet lineage," carried once upon a time by the likes of Grace Kelly.
Other "aha-there's-Carrie-Bradshaw" moments in the pilot: Opting for her mom's Jackie O. shades vs. her classmates' era-obvious Ray-Bans. "She's already making a fashion statement," Daman says. Prancing confidently in that pink-and-black Scaasi party dress. Nonetheless, Daman was conscious of his character's youth and fashion naivete. "We didn't want the dress to be wearing her," so he had it completely recut for Robb's body.
Alex Woo, a New York-based jeweler who designed teen Carrie's C necklace and had pieces featured in every season of Gossip Girl, won't be surprised if retailers knockoff that vintage Scaasi frock. Still, she thinks the Diaries' style influence will be less literal and more inspirational, more about mixing modern and vintage. "This is a real girl you can identify with," she says.
That said, it seems some viewers are already taking away bits and pieces of young Carrie's look. To wit: Hours after Diaries' premiere ended, Woo sold a gold C necklace to someone in Oklahoma — named Carrie.
