Manhattan transfer: Stylist Patricia Field’s new range of clothes

Sex and the City stylist Patricia Field is launching a range of clothes
` in M&S. She tells Carola Long why it’s a perfect fit

Monday, 13 October 2008
Independent.co.uk Web

Until now, the Sex and The City character that M&S most closely
resembled was Miranda: practical and reliable, but not exactly daring.
But for its first major designer collaboration, with the TV show’s
stylist Patricia Field, the British institution has come over more
Samantha and Carrie. Think sequinned jumpsuits and tiny, clingy
mini-dresses.

With her penchant for kitsch, ultra-sexy clothes, Field might not seem
the obvious choice for M&S. Yet, when I meet her in The Hotel Edison in
New York, hours before she unveils the range on the catwalk, she
dismisses the notion. "My look has been proven on worldwide television,
and M&S is a worldwide retailer so I think it’s a perfect fit," she
says, firmly. Seated next to Field is Kate Bostock, M&S’s executive
head of clothing, clad in a red dress from the new range. "I know our
customers extremely well and I know how passionate they are about the
kind of stuff that Patricia has done," Bostock says.

Field’s neon-lit shop in the Bowery area of Manhattan might be a temple
to kitsch’n’bling, with its handcuffs, Spandex dresses, huge diamante
name necklaces, multicoloured wigs and edible knickers, but all that is =0
D
only one aspect of her image. As her styling work shows, she is
versatile. Field, 66, was nominated for an Oscar for her costume design
on The Devil Wears Prada, in which Anne Hathaway’s dowdy PA was
transformed into a shiny-haired, Calvin Klein-clad fashion bunny. She
can also do frumpy ` albeit, as the stylist for Ugly Betty , an
engaging, screen version of frumpy ` and new projects include the US
version of the hit Australian comedy Kath & Kim.

It was Field who approached M&S about the range, which has been termed
Destination Style New York, and when it was announced she was quoted as
saying that she "really wanted to get involved with a brand who really
understood women of all ages". When I ask her about this, however, she
retorts abruptly: "I never said that." Behind the cartoon glamour of
her appearance ` today she is wearing a strapless navy Lurex dress, and
has ketchup-coloured hair in Jessica Rabbit waves ` Field clearly has a
fierce side that, along with her talent for expressing character
through clothing, must have helped her become one of the world’s most
influential stylists.

Born and raised in New York by Greek and Armenian parents, Field began
her retail career when she opened her eponymous Greenwich Village
boutique in 1966. But it was the launch of Sex and the City in 1998
that made her name, and caught the imagination of fashion designers and
clothes=2
0lovers alike. Soon, brands were clamouring to be featured and
Field was seated in the front row of the fashion shows. Eclecticism and
exaggeration were the hallmarks of her look, for which Carrie, played
by Sarah Jessica Parker, was the strongest showcase. Field would put
Parker in deliberately mismatched items, such as dresses over trousers
and masculine tailoring with ultra-feminine vintage pieces, and sparked
multiple trends. Gold name necklaces, giant corsages and prom dresses
were all widely copied, and the show made household names of labels
such as Manolo Blahnik and Fendi.

Why does Field think the show was so successful? "I never really
thought about whether Sex and the City changed the way women dress
until people kept telling me it did. It isn’t part of my consciousness
to be part of some cultural, social, fashion campaign. But I think
people got into stepping out and dressing up a bit more, not copying
the way men dress to go to the office or not being caught up in the
head-to-toe look of a designer, but mixing it all up a bit."

But while for most viewers the programme was an unfettered celebration
of female solidarity and the pure joy of fashion, for others it fuelled
"It Bag" mania and portrayed the characters as being obsessed with
trivialities and brand names ` expensive ones, at that. Field responds:
"I don’t have any social intentions. I am just creating stories, having
fun and dres
sing Barbie dolls." (Field has a Barbie-themed range on her
website.) "When I get a script, I don’t criticise it from a
philosophical point of view or get into it that deeply. I just enjoy
the experience and what comes out, comes out. I’m in the business of
entertainment."

She clearly isn’t entirely resistant to the idea of fashion as a
vehicle for political statement, however ` her shop sells T-shirts in
support of Barack Obama. A colleague suggested the idea, so she went
out and dreamt up the slogan: Elegance, dignity, Obama, statesman. "I’m
sorry for all those hunter-gatherers out there," she drawls dryly in a
clear dig at moose-shooting Governor Sarah Palin, who had just been
announced as John McCain’s running mate when we met. Field once said
she wanted to restyle Hillary Clinton, but no more. "Guess what? I’ve
lost interest!" she guffaws.

The odd spiky response aside, Field clearly has a strong sense of fun,
which is evident in the way she dances and whoops in her seat during
the M&S catwalk show, surrounded by friends and drag queens from the
New York club scene. Her party-loving demeanour also comes across in
her collection for M&S: it’s colourful, sexy and guided by a
late-Seventies and Eighties disco aesthetic. "I don’t think I’ve toned
down my look for the store," says Field, "it was an amalgamation of my
best experiences over the past 10 years or so, whether it be the TV
shows
, the movies or my own collections. My clothes will always be
powerful, and you know, they tend to be sexy."

Several of the pieces are raunchy enough to raise a few eyebrows in
less cosmopolitan branches of Marks & Sparks, and there is also Field’s
trademark love of strong, sometimes clashing colours in the form of a
red-and-pink spotty halterneck dress in velvet and an aqua
angel-sleeved frock. "Some colours looks good with my hair, such as my
turquoise glasses," says Field. "My car has to be a colour that goes
well with my hair, because when I’m sitting in it my hair has to look
cool, so my car is a sort of an awkward turquoise. I also have
turquoise glasses so when I sit in my car with my hair and my glasses
it all looks good together."

There is a fleeting moment of concern about whether "that sounds
vacuous" before she adds, triumphantly, and ever the ambitious stylist:
"The one-shoulder dress in my M&S collection would look really great
teamed with a red convertible."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress