At 58, Sarah Jessica Parker is still a style inspiration to women of all ages

For the generation who grew up with Sex and the City, news that it is 25 years old is no less discombobulating than realising that your baby is now an adult who can legally drink. Just like having an 18-year-old, having a favourite television show that first aired in 1998 can cause you to tumble down a wormhole, freaking out about the passage of time. When you first watched SATC, you were single, and thought you’d never find love. Now, you’re going through a divorce, and wishing you hadn’t. 

There is no point explaining its magic to people who dislike the show: you’ve either got the Carrie gene or you haven’t. For those who have, news that Sarah Jessica Parker (who plays Carrie Bradshaw) is coming to London to star in a new West End production of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, after a sold-out Broadway run, is cause to crack open the champagne. Actually, make that a Cosmopolitan – Carrie’s favourite drink.

For her fans, what Carrie drinks, thinks and (most of all) wears is as compelling now as it was in the show’s very first pilot episode – possibly more so. Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha helped a generation of 30-something women navigate the treacherous worlds of dating and fashion, the show a witty, pithy, stylish six-season masterclass in how to choose the right man and the right shoes. That they’re still (minus Sam) entertaining women in their 50s, in HBO’s reboot And Just Like That... (a second season of which is due to air imminently), is a testament not only to their loyal fan base, but to their own longevity. It’s rare to see any 50-something women on television – and rarer still to see them thriving.

One of the very best things about And Just Like That... is how the fashion still takes centre stage, and is as important to its characters’ lives as it ever was. No matter that many of its midlife viewers will now be watching the show in sweatpants of the sort that Karl Lagerfeld once opined were “a sign of defeat”: in Carrie’s world, it’s still normal to rock up for brunch in a pink tulle skirt, a shrunken vest top, gold Manolos with a statement “pigeon” JW Anderson handbag. 

There are enough “gritty” dramas and “harrowing” psychological thrillers about divorced/depressed women in their 40s and 50s, and not enough positive (and, yes, escapist) representations of midlife on television. That Carrie is still living her best life – for all of us – is key to the show’s charm.

Obviously, it helps that the woman who plays Carrie is living her best life, too. Married for 26 years to the actor Matthew Broderick (who will star opposite her in Plaza Suite), the couple have three children, and until recently lived in a covetable New York brownstone just around the corner from Carrie’s own. Life imitating art, as it does, SJP also has her own shoe range (of course), and in terms of her own style, is as blissfully self-expressive aged 58 as she has always been. 

Like Carrie, she truly loves fashion, as evidenced by her lifelong willingness to experiment. She was wearing Alexander McQueen long before the label became mainstream (in 2006, she wore a tartan McQueen gown to the Met Ball), and has always supported lesser-known designers as enthusiastically as bigger names.

In a world where too many celebrities hire the same cabal of stylists, or dress blandly for fear of ending up on a “worst dressed” list, SJP’s individualism is refreshing. She was and is a risk-taker, one who would rather be true to herself than toe a line. Whatever she wears, she wears it her way: witness the black-and-white polka-dot Jenny Packham dress she wore for an after-party celebrating the SATC franchise’s 25th anniversary. We’re more used to seeing Packham on the Princess of Wales, who wears it beautifully. But SJP made it her own – not easy, when a brand is so aligned with a royal as globally revered as Kate.

An avowed SATC fan, I was a slow convert to the sequel. I hated AJLT... for not featuring Samantha Jones (played by Kim Cattrall). Cattrall and Parker fell out so acrimoniously that Cattrall refused to be a part of it, a stance that makes news of a cameo in season two as exciting as it’s surprising). But, slowly, I came round. Yes, there are flaws, but I would rather watch it in its flawed state than not at all. Twenty-five years down the line, Carrie and co are like family, and families aren’t perfect, either.

Tempting as it is to assume its fans are all frustrated midlifers living out their vicarious dreams, this isn’t the case. As parenting achievements go, few things give me more pride than knowing I’ve raised a Sex and the City fan. 

My 13-year-old daughter is as invested as any diehard viewer who grew up with Carrie and co throughout the 2000s, a fact I partly attribute to the nihilistic, drug-fuelled prism through which her own generation is so often viewed on television. Skins, Sex Education and Euphoria are many things, but they are not fabulous.

“Fabulous” is Carrie’s middle name; the last word she uttered in the final line of the final episode of the final season. So here’s to fabulousness – one of life’s fluffier things, yes, but also one of its most fun and underrated.