It seemed too good to be true when we heard Sarah Jessica Parker was coming back to television and not just television but HBO. After all this was the network that gave us Sex & the City and gave the world, Carrie Bradshaw. She was everyone’s favorite fashionista (sometimes to a questionable point), Louboutin wearing, sex writing gal pal. Thousands of women moved to New York because of her thinking they could live off of writing one article a week and still be able to afford to go out every night and wear Louboutins like they were running sneakers. She was a fashion icon, a sex kitten, a kooky blond and a feminist all at once. She was something different to every woman.
And so when the show ended in 2004 everyone mourned that the fabulously eccentric fashion sense of one Little Miss Carrie Bradshaw would not be coming into our lives every Sunday night (even if sometimes it was only a super short 8-episode season.) So in 2017 when her new HBO show Divorce premiered people got very excited as they expected it to be the return of Carrie Bradshaw. Well, they were in for a very rude awakening as even though the series took place in a suburb of New York City and SJP (now playing a woman named Frances Dufresne) still looks quite similar to Carrie (though wearing her hair a bit straighter these days) this was definitely not “Sex & the City: The Later Years.” Divorce is a dark dramedy, also starring Thomas Haden Church as the perplexing but ultimately likeable Robert Dufresne, about the breakup of a long marriage that had been dead for a number of years. It is about the psychological and sometimes physical damage the disillusionment of a long, serious relationship does to your world especially when children are involved.
Though there was a dedicated audience for the show, it was not quite what you would call a hit. Even though Carrie and Big had their issues (as we saw in the followup films) they were clearly meant to be with each other. But Divorce was more like if Carrie and Aidan had actually gotten married even though they truly had nothing in common. It just probably wouldn’t have ended well.
As for the fashion on the series, Frances is an excellent dresser but like Carrie she is a bit off the beat and path and often a little quirky with her sartorial choices. However, unlike Carrie, Frances stays away from the classic see through white shirt and black bra look which the sex columnist always sported as well as all those crazy midriff wearing pieces, hot pants, fur coats, tube tops, random knee socks and non-sensical giant flowers. Frances is a bit more ladylike (more similar to SJP’s real-life style) with lots of A-line skirts, decorative coats, and tights.
Frances also wears weather appropriate coats and (gasp!) sneakers sometimes. However, in Season 2 (which just premiered this month) we are going to start to see Frances dating for the first time so perhaps we will get to see some sexier ensembles come out. But luckily, both Carrie and Frances still have the best nightgowns television has ever seen.
