‘There hasn’t been a show like it’: Why there’s still more to say about Sex and the City
How much can one say about Sex and the City? As it turns out, quite a bit.
It’s been 26 years since we first met Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, but the groundbreaking series about the sex lives of four friends living in New York is showing no signs of leaving the zeitgeist.
Sex and the City: No signs of leaving the zeitgeist.Credit:
On TikTok, videos about “how to dress like Carrie Bradshaw” abound, often featuring Gen Z creators too young to have watched the show when it first aired. Search the show’s name under Spotify or Apple’s podcast sections and countless titles appear. And of course there’s the spin-off series And Just Like That…, set to return for a third season next year.
So what makes the show such ripe fodder for endless dissection and discussion?
Chelsea Fairless, 40, and Lauren Garroni, 36, are the duo behind Every Outfit on Sex and the City, one of the first and most popular podcasts to go deep on the series. Since debuting in 2021, they have recorded more than 150 hours of episodes – although they now also discuss pop culture and fashion more broadly.
“You can’t argue with quality. It [the series] had so much significance when it came out because it was ahead of its time in so many ways,” Fairless says of the show’s longevity.
Lauren Garroni (left) and Chelsea Fairless, hosts of the podcast Every Outfit on Sex and the City.Credit:
“It was one of the first prestige television shows on cable. It was ahead of the curve in the sense that people weren’t talking about sex on television at the time. Now, of course, it seems very tame, but I think people forget how subversive it actually was at the time.”
While there have been countless iterations of the “four single women in the big city” format since – Lena Dunham’s 2012 series Girls comes to mind – none have come close to emulating its cultural impact.
“There hasn’t been a show that redefines style, sex and female friendship in the way that Sex and the City has,” Garroni says. “I think we’re now in this really sweet nostalgia point where people are obsessed with late ’90s, Y2K, and that is the apex of the show’s popularity.”
Every Outfit on Sex and the City is the natural evolution of the Instagram account of the same name, which the friends started “as a joke” in 2016 to document its fashion. Both Garroni and Fairless have extensive experience in the fashion industry and encyclopaedic knowledge of fashion history, which they use to write whip-smart, humorous commentary on the show’s many looks.
‘There hasn’t been a show that redefines style, sex and female friendship in the way that Sex and the City has.’
Lauren Garroni, co-host of podcast Every Outfit on Sex and the City
But for something that began as a bit of fun, it’s come a long way. Today, they have almost 750,000 Instagram followers, and the podcast is now a full-time affair. (Both continue to work on side projects – Fairless as a social media strategist and designer; Garroni as a writer and director. Her directorial debut, Sugar Baby, was released in October.)
In 2018, they were invited by Cynthia Nixon, who plays Miranda on the show, to work on her campaign for New York governor. They’ve designed a collection for Sarah Jessica Parker’s shoe brand and interviewed Candace Bushnell, the “real life” Carrie Bradshaw who wrote the book on which the series was based.
Garroni and Fairless are speaking to this masthead via video call from LA, sitting on the floor of the wardrobe in which they record most of their podcast episodes. Later this month, they will take their live show, which they have been touring this year around the US and Europe, to Australia and New Zealand.
“When you have a podcast, you really don’t know how it’s metabolised by other people, and only when you start to break forth do you see the people who actually listen to the podcast,” Garroni says of their tour so far.
One of the best parts of being on the road is seeing the community that’s formed from the podcast, she says. In London, a group of fans who had single tickets to the show connected and have since become friends.
With sold-out Sydney and Melbourne live shows, the popularity of the podcast in Australia is obvious.
“There’s something about Australia. I don’t know if it’s because Chelsea’s wife is Australian [Fairless is married to celebrity stylist Tatiana Waterford], but they are particularly obsessed with the podcast. So I imagine that there will be a lot of rabid fans,” Garroni says.
There are also a few Australian “Easter eggs” in the original Sex and the City series.
The pilot opens with Elizabeth, a “British” journalist newly arrived in New York who speaks with a glaringly obvious Aussie accent (the character, who we never see again, is played by Australian actor Sarah Wynter). There’s Sydney-born actor Murray Bartlett, who makes a two-episode appearance as Carrie’s gay friend in season four.
And, of course, there’s the iconic floral dress Carrie wears when she falls into Central Park lake with Mr Big, by Melbourne-born designer Richard Tyler. One version was sold at a charity event in 2001, while the other was donated by Sarah Jessica Parker to Museums Victoria in 2003.
Today, podcast hosts are often as famous as the subjects or people they talk about, attracting legions of devoted listeners. Every Outfit’s fans are fondly referred to as “f---ettes”, a reference to the infamous “fashion roadkill” episode in season four in which comedian Margaret Cho, playing fashion producer Lynne Cameron, quips “yes, f---ette” to Carrie.
Sarah Jessica Parker’s iconic floral dress, by Melbourne-born designer Richard Tyler, in season three of Sex and the City.Credit:
Three “f---ettes” have given birth while listening to their podcast, while other fans have gotten Every Outfit tattoos. In November 2021, they introduced a hotline allowing listeners to engage with them more intimately, while the pair often divulge more intimate details about themselves.
For Garroni, the endeavour has had a huge impact on her personal life – she met her now husband, Paul Glover, when he left a comment on one of their Instagram posts. Fairless, noticing that 8 per cent of their listeners were men, published a post asking the straight male listeners to come forward.
“I identify as a Steve-Aidan hybrid with Harry tendencies,” Glover wrote in response, and the rest, as they say, is history. Their July LA wedding was featured in The New York Times’ infamous “Vows” section, mirroring the show in which a spread in the newspaper was highly coveted by its characters.
Like many Millennial women, Garroni and Fairless were teenagers when the show first aired. Naturally, their reading of the show has evolved as they have. In 2019, they published a book, We Should All Be Mirandas, an ode to the redheaded lawyer and her relatability.
“We aged into Mirandas, I suppose,” Fairless says.
“The way I looked at it as a teenager is very different from how I look at it now. I remember once I turned 38 I was like, ‘Oh, f---, I’m now Carrie in season six’. So obviously, the older you are, you relate to the characters more.”
Garroni adds: “The reason we wrote the book was [because] something we were noticing in having the Instagram was people were saying, ‘I always thought I was a Carrie, but I was embarrassed that I was a Miranda’.
“[But] that narrative has shifted because of the way Miranda is portrayed on And Just Like That… .” (Some fans have criticised the spin-off’s portrayal of the sarcastic, quick-witted lawyer as too clueless or awkward.)
On the internet, takes on Carrie’s behaviour continue to evolve too. “There’s been the recent internet resurgence of, ‘Oh, Carrie maybe is the worst character’,” agrees Garroni.
“Now I’m liking the counter conversation that I’ve just noticed is starting, where people are like, ‘You know what? I hate this narrative that Carrie’s the worst. Actually, she’s the best’.”
Garroni and Fairless have been best friends since they met while studying at Parsons School of Design in New York in 2008. Their undeniable chemistry is part of what makes the podcast such a joy to listen to, but neither worries about what being in business together might mean for their relationship.
“We see each other more than our [business] partners … but I think in my approximation, I’ve noticed a lot of engineered friendship podcasts that ultimately end up breaking apart,” Garroni says.
“And I think – knock on wood – what we have going for us is that we were friends before we started the Instagram, before we started the podcast, and so we have that foundation.”
As for what’s next, they aren’t too interested in having someone like Sarah Jessica Parker on the show.
“We’ve never really wanted to be an interview show. We just like talking to each other,” Fairless says.
For now, they’re focusing on their merch line, introducing video to the podcast, and doing what they do best: talking about Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.
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