Sex, the city and the costume designer

NEW YORK — Patricia Field, the costume designer for "Sex and the City," has been standing behind a glass counter full of rhinestone jewelry in her Bowery store talking about the power of sexuality, the potential for movies to move clothes and her unexpected windfall of success from dressing Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. She smokes an uninterrupted chain of cigarettes, each one lit without regard to city laws prohibiting smoking in public spaces. Field is not a woman who has ever fretted about the rules.

She spent almost 30 years on the fringes of the mainstream fashion industry — playing by her own rules in a little world populated by vinyl pants, leopard-print bustiers, tranny gear and club kid frippery — and then the universe shifted and Field wound up at the center of it.

"I've always been independent, and I like it that way. I do what I do. It's good for your mental health. As far as the fashion world, I was on the outside. But fashion designers were always in my store checking us out and looking for inspiration," Field says. "I managed to stay around and put bread on the table."

Then the world went wacky for "Sex and the City" and its star Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays Carrie Bradshaw, the freelance writer and girl-about-town. More specifically, the audience fell in love with Carrie's style, which ranged from Versace couture to a $189 nameplate necklace. Which really meant that folks had fallen in love with Field.

"A certain respect developed for me in the fashion world," says Field, her voice gravelly with smoke and the ballsy swagger of a New York accent. "I didn't change. Circumstances changed."

Setting her own rules

Designers began inviting Field to their fashion shows and putting her in the front row. Translation? Please, please, please pick something from my collection for Carrie! Retailers stocked their stores with whatever frock or accessory they'd heard Field had eyed. Fashion students idolized her.

Field signed deals to design collections for Candies, Barbie and Payless, whose shoes she wore to the Oscars. And she still maintains her affection for stretch pants and costume jewelry.

Before "Sex and the City" — either the television show or the movie, which opens Friday — Field was a retailer, a designer, an occasional costumer and a habitue of a New York night scene that was gender-bending and stereotype-busting. Field still represents a version of New York that preceded the Disney takeover of Times Square and the arrival of yuppies with Bugaboo strollers in Harlem.

"She's just a free spirit and doesn't go by anyone else's rules," says designer Michael Vollbracht, who has known her since the 1970s. "And she doesn't play by the rules of the fashion mafia."

The native New Yorker opened her first store in 1966 in the West Village and in the '90s had a shop in SoHo. Now the Patricia Field store is in the Bowery, which is evolving into another glossy neighborhood with the transformation of the former punk nightspot CBGB into a John Varvatos store.

But Field, 66, soldiers on with her psychedelic windows that are half boho carnival and half red-light district — giving the erroneous impression that her customer base might consist of Woodstock hookers instead of the club kids, bargain hunters and dreamers who stubbornly believe that style is a form of artistic and psychic expression.

The shop is filled with an eclectic mix of fashion including a $230 white jersey cocktail dress with a feather-dusted hem and an elaborately gnarled and printed T-shirt for $160 that asks, "Whatever happened to Britney Spears?" The shirt was designed by a fellow who goes by Tom Tom who also happens to work the counter.

Fans come here to pay homage to Carrie Bradshaw, who, thanks to Field, launched a laundry list of trends.

"A lot of the people thought my store was 'Sex and the City.' They didn't understand that I costumed a script," Field says. "Carrie's wardrobe of Oscar de la Renta and Lanvin is not here."

But Field carries a few iconic "Sex and the City" pieces such as the nameplate necklaces. If there weren't some evidence of Carrie in this shop, there might be a riot.

Field has a long list of credits as a costume designer, ranging from "Spin City" to a television special involving Mother Goose. She's won Emmys and was nominated for an Oscar for her work on "The Devil Wears Prada." But her renown is based on the years she spent crafting the wardrobe and clarifying the personalities of that quartet of single New York City friends who came to embody both the truth and the desires of 30-something women.

Dressing the movie

Field's approach to dressing the characters in the "Sex and the City" film does not focus on assessing the trends of the season and then deciding who should wear what.

Instead, she is a storyteller. When she began forming her game plan for the movie, she asked herself how the lead characters had changed over four years — the amount of time that elapsed since audiences last saw the quartet.

Charlotte, played by Kristin Davis, became a Park Avenue mom. Her preppy style "begins to assume more sophistication. I looked at Jackie Kennedy for inspiration."

Miranda has moved to Brooklyn, but "she's made some money," Field says. "I saw a picture of [actress Cynthia Nixon], and her hair had grown out. I thought she looked like a classic American WASP. It looked good. Her hairdo gave me inspiration. So I said let's do a little Prada. But it could also be Michael Kors."

Samantha, who has moved to California with her boyfriend Smith, becomes a more intensely saturated version of herself. "The other girls evolved linearly. She just evolved like a big bang," Field says.

As for Carrie, "she stood for the fashion end of the show. ... Her style was eclectic. It was rooted in the ballerina with Oscar de la Renta, the tutu. What could time have done to her?" Field asked herself. "She became more sophisticated, but sexy."

"There's always this stigma about women aging," Field says. "Men can, but women can't. When a woman ages she loses her coquettishness, but she ripens."

Sexiness is directly related to confidence and control. Carrie has grown up and grown older. And for Field, that means she has only gotten better.