carrie's apartment: better before movie makeover?
This week we headed out to the movie theater with some friends to see Sex in The City. If anything, it made us nostalgic — for old friends, nights on the town, President Clinton, and our city before 9-11. But what about the decor? Our pal movie critic Thelma Adams was kind enough to give us her professional take on Carrie’s new digs.
My Us Weekly readers keep reminding me that S&TC is all about fantasy – and nothing could be more like a castle in the sky than the breezy Manhattan penthouse apartment Mr. Big is ready to buy for Carrie. The fact that it’s unfurnished only shows off its great bones: high-ceilinged rooms with galleria windows, a fabulous terrace. Sunlight streams in like good camera lighting on an over-forty face. The walls are neutral, the floors hard wood. And, of course, mirroring the relationship between Big and Carrie, the girl finds the single flaw: the bedroom closet is teeny-tiny. As a sign of his devotion, Big promises to build Carrie a dream closet for all those Manolos – and he does. It’s the wet dream of clothes closets: bright, white, deep, plushly carpeted, with rows and rows of shelves for her shoe fetish. Natch, the course of Carrie and Big’s lovelife never did run smooth, despite the fantastic apartment, and Carrie takes a detour, redecorates her old apartment, and includes a $300 pillow that looks no better than the many I’ve bought at Target for under $25. If you love fantasy, and you consider Carrie’s little splurge a drop in the bucket compared to Brad Pitt’s $293,000 designer coffee table, then stop here. Otherwise, for more on the $300 pillow and my weariness at the show’s relentless materialism, check out my Huffington Post blog. — Thelma Adams
What do you think of Carrie’s apartment re-do in the movie? Better before or after? We must admit we prefer the lived-in, eclectic look to her tv-show place. (How did they make that radiator disappear? Now, that is fantasy!) … And, if you are craving more info on what you’ve seen in the movie, check out Casa Sugar’s q&a with designer Jeremy Conway and Elements of Style’s tips on how to get the look.
the first thing that shouts at me is the color blue. i love blue walls. and blue is such an elusive color: blue green? green blue? I could take days shifting between Farrow & Ball samples. Funny how the colors that you never wear can be perfect for walls.
but…..I’m afraid of doing that picture thing. Why? I have fear of nail holes. Who’s gonna spackle that wall when she finally gives up the apartment for Mr. Big? Or is there some new nail-free picture hanger I’m not aware of?
Despite my moral opposition to blue, I loved how the apartment was just saturated with the great tones. I felt that the makeover was very appropriate to Carrie’s development in the movie. Her old apartment is very much a cobbled-together I’m-still-finding-my-way as a journalist style; after the makeover you can tell that she’s an accomplished woman who knows what she wants and has earned the means to afford it.
@thelma – girl, you need to check out the 3M aisle at Target! You won’t believe the fantastic options.
thanks, ellobie, for the hints. on to the 3m aisle!
While I loved the color of the blue walls, it seemed too much to be used throughout the whole apartment. The space also felt a bit cold and too “designed” and not very homey. This all seemed like such a stark contrast to space before. I can understand them wanting to evolve the space to be more mature, but it just felt like it was missing something.
I know I’m in the minority but I wouldn’t have chosen blue. Maybe grey. However, I loved the drapes.
I did pause for a moment when she mentioned that $300 pillow. Maybe because I could never get a $300 pillow, since my dog considers them chew toys, but also because it was pretty blahsville.
And about that closet. ANY woman would die to have it. However, my brother-in-law pointed out that Big built it for her in a space that had previously been occupied by the back of a stairwell. I guess it did sort of materialize out of nothing, but I glossed over that entirely when I saw it. It looked like the Vogue fashion closet.
I understand the qualms about materialism, but it frightens me — it really does — when I see the level of vitriol aimed at women regarding this movie on places like IMDB. Seriously, pop over there and take a gander. It’s appalling. It seems that men conveniently erase any movie where their gender is less-than-stellar in representation (Knocked Up, anyone?) and are insisting that because women like the movie, we ARE EXACTLY LIKE THE CHARACTERS and want to BE them. Some men, anyway. Are men that afraid of women having a little box office power, or of having sex in their dotage — you know, like 40? OMG.
Sorry for the rant, had to get that off my heaving bosom. ; )
Thanks so much for the mention and link! :)
The blue photographs really nicely! But I know I would prefer living in a space with the gray.
I actually fell in love with the blue, though I’d be too chicken to do it in my bedroom. Alas, I will just continue to live vicariously through Carrie. :-)
Jane
so glad we got so much talk going. i love the way women can move back and forth between design issues, movies, their own lives, female empowerment (or how it’s represented on screen). I think it’s OK both to love S&TC and/or revile it — or even pick the characters we relate to and reject those we don’t. When discussing design, one funny thing is, I share my bedroom with my husband, (we share our bedroom?) so I try not to be too pink when I pick my Target shabby chic sheets. I try to mitigate it with some green. And I love in mags when they have white or off-white slipcovers — it looks so clean, but it wouldn’t withstand the way my two kids wander and eat. It would be just an invite to me yelling!
I haven’t seen the movie to see how the character developed, but I don’t think that’s Carrie’s apartment. It may be what they came up with to transcend these couple of years, but it doesn’t seem to represent her authentically. It’s rather a drastic departure, I mean, in some way to define that she isn’t who she was but it’s jarring, and seems unnatural. Is it nice? It’s pretty, but I think the pictures should extend a few inches wider, and the room is missing some cohesion. The table on the right seems too far away from the bed. It just has some distance issues. Did I nail it!?
How did they get rid of that radiator and make that horrible table appear? It’s nice, I agree with the previous comment, but lacks something. Personality. Did anyone notice the huge canvas by Carrie’s door that (I think) says “LOVE”? I thought it was funny, because all the time spent in her apartment she is without Big. And they kinda purposely cut it out of scenes so you just see the edge of it. The set designer goes and spends a whole lotta mad movie money on this thing that takes up a whole lotta wall, and then it doesn’t even really get shown in the movie!
[...] 1) Forget the clothes. What we really are obsessing over from Sex & the City is the color of Carrie’s walls. Melissa was one of many who weighed in, saying: “While I loved the color of the blue walls, it seemed too much to be used throughout the whole apartment. The space also felt a bit cold and too ‘designed’ and not very homey.” Click here to tell us what you think of the film. [...]
Carrie’s new room looks too “designed” and I doubt she would keep it looking like that too long. Carrie’s charm has always been that she could throw things together and it was her personal style that made it fabulous. I didn’t like that the “perfume” picture,the one that was alway next to her apartment door, moved in the movie and became “framed” That bothered me. I enjoyed the movie, but it sealed up the loose ends a little too much.
I think it mirrored her life. She had some serious apartment therapy. It shows the difference between a 30-something apartment and a 40-something apartment. (Remember the 20-something apartment with the loft bed, toilet paper coffee filter and candles from Urban Outfitters?) She cleared clutter (remember the big bookcase in the hall – gone), she tucked business stuff behind that organization wall that was clever but I didn’t like it – that part was a little too modern for Carrie. She cleared out the emotional and literal baggage.
I thought the blue looked great on film, but I’ve done a similar blue in my own house and it was a disaster to live in. Ironically, it was called “Serenity.” After I finished painting and realized how awful it was I screamed “serenity now! serenity now! I felt like I lived in the bottom of a pool.
That is really funny that the radiator is gone! Maybe her building suddenly converted to forced air?