The croissant dress: will we develop a taste for food-themed couture?

It was supposed to be a moving finale for the Sex and the City spin-off. So why, asked the internet, was Sarah Jessica Parker in an outfit that looked like a French pastry?
  
  

Sarah Jessica Parker in croissant dress as Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That.
Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That. Photograph: Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max

Name: The croissant dress.

Age: Three.

Appearance: Well, a croissant.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Not a Sex and the City fan then, eh?

Good Lord, is that still going? Not really. The series ran until 2004, and then it was followed by two films, and now there is the spin-off series And Just Like That.

OK, and what does this have to do with croissants? In the final episode of And Just Like That, Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, wore a dress that looked a bit like a croissant.

Why? She was in Paris.

Makes sense. In fairness, she didn’t deliberately try to dress up like a croissant. That would be pathologically stupid. Instead, she chose to mark the climactic moments of the series by wearing a spring/summer 2019 Valentino couture gown. It just happened to look like a croissant.

Definitely wasn’t deliberate, then? No, absolutely not. Only the worst kind of berserk tourist would visit a country and adopt its iconography as fashion. Carrie Bradshaw isn’t that stupid. Although …

Although what? Although she was also holding a handbag shaped like the Eiffel Tower. I take it all back.

Maybe this is the start of a trend. Maybe the trend already exists. Cast your mind back to the 2015 Met Gala, when Rihanna rocked up in a yellow dress with a huge circular train that the internet quickly decided looked like an omelette, or a pizza?

No. Well, it happened. And this sort of thing happens so much that a Thai clothing store owner named Sine Benjaphorn will often recreate celebrity dresses out of food. Most notoriously, she once recreated a Rihanna dress out of nothing but sliced ham.

I wonder what she’d make Carrie Bradshaw’s dress out of. A croissant, obviously. A really big croissant. Because that’s what the dress looks like.

And Just Like That must be pretty embarrassed that this is all it will be remembered for. On the contrary, the show has suffered through several catastrophes during its brief run. Its first episode crashed Peloton’s stock price, for instance, and the show has suffered constant criticism for its clumsy attempts at wokeness. Plus there’s still the lingering void left by Kim Cattrall’s absence to worry about.

That’s a lot of stuff for one show. It is. And Just Like That has proved to be one of the most divisive on television.

So why is the internet talking about a dress? Look, it’s the internet. Why does it do anything?

Do say: “Carrie Bradshaw went to Paris and wore a dress that looks like a croissant.”

Don’t say: “Next season she’ll come to the UK and wear a dress that looks like a £3 Tesco meal deal.”

 

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