“And Just Like That…” Borrowed Over $3 Million in Clothes for Season Two

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There’s a deeply troubling moment in the trailer for And Just Like That… season two, when Carrie Bradshaw reveals that she has “repurposed” her kitchen. We see Sarah Jessica Parker’s now-widowed writer—known for her over-the-top moments, naked dresses, and jumbo floral brooches—going about the mundane act of poaching an egg. Times change, and so has she—the new season of the hit Sex and the City revival series seems to be bringing us an iteration of Carrie who’s using her oven for actual cooking, rather than as extra closet space. “Did you know that stoves aren’t just for storage?” she asks. Is nothing sacred?

Rest assured, season two promises all of the high-volume fashion moments you’ve come to know, love, and expect from this franchise. From what we’ve seen so far, we can expect loads of Fendi baguettes, heaps of dramatic hats, and—gasp!—even a certain iconic Vivienne Westwood wedding dress. To pull back the curtain on the return this week of And Just Like That…, we caught up with co-costume designers Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago and got to the bottom of what exactly we can expect from the new batch of episodes.

Who has the biggest style transformation this season?

Danny Santiago: I would say Nya (Karen Pittman), because of the fact that she’s out there dating now. She’s a professor, but she’s feeling hot now—she’s dressing up more, she’s going on dates. She’s progressed in her style. She wore a lot of sportswear [in season one], but now she’s going out at night, she’s meeting the girls for drinks, she’s getting dressed up. There’s been a lot of progression in her costume.

Molly Rogers: Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) as well. Miranda is searching. I find it really interesting. Sometimes her fittings were as long as Carrie’s, because Miranda is going through changes, and I’m not talking about menopause. I’m talking about what she’s exploring. I also find her to be stirring her looks, but Nya is a great one as well.

Molly, you worked on every season of Sex and the City, and both you and Danny worked on the films, as well. How does costuming And Just Like That… compare or contrast to your previous work in this universe?

Molly: For me it remains pretty much the same. It’s such a familiar place. [Legendary Sex and the City costume designer Patricia] Field and myself and everyone that worked on the original series established a way of working and shopping and setting up a fitting room. Pat stamped the DNA into all the characters, and it’s just this road map that I feel very comfortable following. It’s a familiar coat I can put on. And having worked with Danny on the movies, Danny and I have so much in common with music and art and architecture. We often think in the same way and reach for the same handbag.

Danny: For me, the difference from the movies is, this is episodic. When we worked on the movies, it’s just one script. Episodic is just so much more involved: We’re working on not just one episode, but two or three at the same time. And whereas in the film we know the beginning and the end, this is a bit more of a chase.

Molly: We don’t have an idea of revisions in the scripts. Some things are kept secret from us in the costume department. Sometimes we’re thrown fun curveballs, too.

With so many characters, so many episodes, so many changes per episode, help me understand the volume of stuff involved in a production like this.

Molly: I don’t think people understand the volume of things that come into the room on a show like this. I think back to all the big scenes in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Those are massive retro scenes and they’re building so much of the clothes. I can only imagine as a period television show what is being hauled into that department. And ours is up there too. We have many, many changes to all the characters. They change clothes a lot. It’s not a sitcom where they have two changes an episode. Plus, there are important exteriors that the world is going to see what they’re wearing because they’re outside. It’s eight or nine days to shoot two episodes, so every fitting cycle is every nine days. It’s a quantity that’s more than a what a fashion magazine would have at any given moment … It’s a real train that never stops once it leaves the station. When young people say to me, “I love fashion, I want a job”—I don’t want to hear that you love fashion. I want to hear the nuts and bolts of the job.

Danny: We want people that want to get their hands dirty … We’ve got a huge team that works with us, of shoppers, coordinators, PAs, drivers. It’s a constant in-and-out of coming and going. Things coming from stores, from Europe, things that are being custom-made. So many things. And it’s every character we’re shopping for. And we have these huge scenes where they’re all in the same scene. So to put those things together, we go through racks and racks and racks of clothes. On a normal fitting, we probably have somewhere between eight to 10 racks full of clothes, maybe 30 or 40 pairs of shoes, maybe another 30 or 40 handbags, not to mention jewelry.

Molly: I found someone in my department to track how much clothing we were borrowing in dollar amounts, and the last total I saw was $3 million. We can’t do this show unless we borrow things. On an average TV budget, you’re not going to buy the latest Bottega purse.

I imagine brands are very happy to lend you clothes and accessories for the chance to have them filmed. But is it difficult in the social media age to find the right look, at the right moment, before it gets “seen” too much?

Danny: We’ve been very lucky. The faster the world turns—and we all know how fast it is—the more you really have to go on the treasure hunt for pieces to pull a look off the runway and then have it not air for four to five months. We’re competing with social media, and people are wearing things right from the runway shows. You see a gown on the runway on Friday, and on Sunday it’s on Lady Gaga at the Oscars. You really have to be inventive. But the lucky thing with Carrie and her style is that it doesn’t matter where it’s from and who made it—it’s the mix of things. That saves us in the end. We’re not chained to being current.

On a show with so many clothes, so many changes, is it difficult to get the small details right?

Molly: It’s essential!

Danny: We’re under a microscope.

Molly: Pat Field was very hardcore about that. If something was too tight or it was off, and we couldn’t fix it it, they didn’t get to wear it.

Is there a particular look this season that you’re really proud of?

Danny: One thing we were just talking about was the cape that we used for Carrie’s Met event—this cape she wore with the Vivienne Westwood wedding dress. It’s actually a gown we turned into a cape. The color was so beautiful that we couldn’t find another color that met the beauty of what that color was when you saw it in person, so we went ahead and made the cape out of that gown.

Is there anything from your costume department the actors tried to pilfer?

Molly: I’m not sure, but Nicole Parker loved everything, and she’s turned into a real clothes horse. She’s actually made a very good connection with Valentino now, and they love her and they’ve been dressing her.

Danny: There were a few things that Sarah Jessica told us, “This is going to disappear,” but she gets to keep everything anyway, and so do Cynthia and Kristin [Davis].

Molly: The men are the worst! They love their suits. Chris Jackson and Mario Cantone. I’d find myself asking, “Where are those Versace jeans you wore on set last week? You have to wear them again!”

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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