Get Miranda's look from Sex and the City

PLOT SPOILERS!

Miranda Hobbes has always been (unfairly) pegged as the unattractive, frumpy member of the Sex and the City quartet. The one that men don’t notice and women choose to ignore. Maybe it’s because she has short, auburn hair. Maybe it’s her character’s sharp intelligence that sees her rise from Harvard law school to junior partner at a city law firm. Or maybe it’s her fiercely cynical and suspicious attitude towards men. The case remains unsolved.

Sure, she wore some shockers early on in the TV show’s seven-year run including baggy denim dungarees, but as the series became more and more successful, so Miranda’s wardrobe improved. Gone were the puffy jackets and ugly suits and in came shapely dresses and her “skinny jeans”. But whatever the logic behind the prejudice, SATC’s resident redhead enjoys a bit of a makeover for the new film.

“I don’t know who liked sensible Miranda, but they are going to like her a lot more when they see the movie,” comments SATC’s style guru, celebrated costume designer Patricia Field. Picking up four years after the TV show finished, the movie’s opening titles inform us that Miranda has since “settled down in Brooklyn with Steve and Brady,” suggesting a dull domesticity with aprons and fluffy slippers. But fear not, this IS Sex and the City after all.

Field was pleasantly surprised to discover that during the intervening years, actress Cynthia Nixon had made some welcome personal changes. “Since the series finished, Cynthia had lost 15lb, so she could wear clothing much better,” she explains, while adding that a new hairstyle was also of note. “I saw a picture of [her], and her hair had grown out. I thought she looked like a classic American WASP. It looked good. Her hairdo gave me inspiration.”

Nixon, an acclaimed theatre actress, had also become more interested in fashion (note the well-received floor-length, metallic Calvin Klein gown she wore to the film’s London premiere), and wanted to make more of a contribution towards Miranda’s style – all eagerly appreciated by Field. “The changes came organically through the actress,” remembers the Oscar-nominated Field. “I just got on the surfboard and rode it.”

This “surfboard” sees Miranda move further away from some of her functional, work wardrobe into more glamorous, expensive fashion territory. During SATC’s heyday, Field had felt that Miranda’s busy, no-frills, office job limited her creatively, but with the focus of the film more on the character’s private lives than their day-to-day work schedules, greater liberties could be taken. Field reasoned that “she’s [Miranda’s] made some money,” since the last time we saw her and that with this greater bank balance came a designer wardrobe. “So I said let’s do a little Prada,” she says.

This more up-market look still stays true to Field’s original vision of Miranda – a “pop-ethnic look with mixed patterns and colours,” with dresses enjoying the limelight. Of particular note are the colourful, empire T-Bags maxi dress (as worn during the Mexican restaurant scene) and the black and white block-patterned Maggie London dress (seen as the foursome attends the auction). More practical outfits are paraded, but when Miranda would previously have loafed about the house in sweatpants, now she wears a Donna Karan sweatshirt and Marc Jacobs sandals.

With the film spanning a year, Miranda’s looks take in all weathers, from the red 50s-inspired Norma Kamali bathing suit to a whole host of winter coats including names such as Valentino. Her colour palette is still comprised of greens, reds and browns that compliment her pale complexion and red hair, making the odd metallic outfit (such as the gold Alberta Ferretti dress as worn during a street scene) really stand out. This break from her more muted shades provides a telling insight into this ‘new’ Miranda, with her dark blue bridesmaid dress equally unexpected. Like Charlotte and Samantha, her fellow bridesmaids on Carrie’s big day, she is dressed in a floor-length Zac Posen gown, though unlike the other two wearing black and red respectively, the dark blue is a dramatic break from her comfort zone.

Field has dubbed Miranda’s new fashion-forward attitude a “revelation”, and it seems that this change not only pleases the costume department, but also Nixon herself. “I took home everything I possibly could,” says the actress on how much of the film’s clothes she got to keep for herself. Sounds like a good plan.