CULTURE

Sarah Jessica Parker and Candace Bushnell, The Two Carrie Bradshaws, Wore The Same Dress

The battle of the Bradshaws.


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Photo of Candace Bushnell by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images. Additional imagery via Instagram/@sarahjessicaparker.

Back in April, Sarah Jessica Parker got dressed up for a date with Bravo mastermind Andy Cohen. She struck a pose on her West Village stoop for daughter Tabitha Broderick, resplendent in a metallic floral dress from Stella McCartney. It was all very latter-season Sex and the City, when they threw budget constraints out the window and started putting Carrie in an endless parade of pastry-like evening gowns.

But then a month later, Carrie Bradshaw-creator Candace Bushnell wore the same thing to the US premiere of Elton John biopic Rocketman. Roland Barthes’s head has surely exploded within his grave. The author lives!

Bushnell’s New York Observer columns about dating and nightlife (she called them works of “cultural anthropology”) in New York provided the source material for Sex and the City; Carrie Bradshaw was the name she gave her print alter-ego. Bushnell created Bradshaw–who is much darker and more caustic in her work–but Sarah Jessica Parker (and puns and Darren Star) made her a household name. They’re forever connected! And so we couldn’t help but wonder: did either of them fire their stylists? Has anyone thought to contact shoegal@aol.com?

Candace Bushnell attends the New York premiere of “Rocketman.”

Dimitrios Kambouris

Bushnell has a new book coming out this summer, titled “Is There Still Sex In the City?” (already slated to be a television series). Perhaps she and Parker could make appearances on a book tour in matching outfits, like when Charlotte had an unfortunate martini lunch with her sorority sisters in matching twinsets. They could invite bonus Bradshaw AnnaSophia Robb! As the fictional columnist once wistfully opined, “if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”