Field, unsurprisingly, has little time for fast fashion. “It
is not interesting to me — it’s trendy and everywhere,”
which is just “urgh”, Field says, miming a vomit. The
Field-Fitoussi formula is threefold: one part luxury
fashion, one part vintage, one part emerging label.
“I have this young crew in the gallery and they tell me
the Nineties are back and I say, ‘Oh yeah — what does
that look like?’ And they say, ‘You know what it looks like,
you did Sex and the City!’ But was that
the Nineties? I don’t think in terms
of decades.” She pauses. “Except the
Sixties. That really felt like the Sixties.”
Field, who was born in the New York
borough of Queens in 1942 to a
Greek mother and an Armenian father,
opened her first boutique in 1966 when
she was just 24. She learnt a lot about
how to run a business from her mother,
who owned a chain of dry cleaners.
Field is a lesbian and her store quickly
became iconic on the gay and drag
scene. She closed up shop a half-
century later in 2016, founding her gallery, which she
describes as a “salad of fashion, art and business”, two
years later. Does she miss her retail days? “I’m forward-
thinking. I don’t like to be retro.”
Well, I’m sorry to drag you back, I say (I’m not sorry
at all), but can we talk about Sex and the City? The
show, about four women navigating the dating scene
in New York, ended in 2004 but continues to inspire
fans and designers alike — the label Reformation,
for instance, currently sells a newsprint denim mini-
skirt (which I bought as soon as I saw it) that’s
based on the John Galliano for Dior dress that Sarah
Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw wore. Carrie is agirl? No!” Of the criticism that Emily would never be
able to buy herself such a wardrobe on her salary? “If
I wanted to do reality, I would make a documentary,”
Field retorts. Touché.
As with anything Field works on, Emily in Paris is as
much about the clothes as it is the characters. And boy,
are there clothes — 10,000 pieces in their Paris show-
room. Every morning Field, who spent six months in
Paris for each series, says she would
gasp across the sequined hillocks: “My
God, Marylin, have you ever seen so
many clothes in your life?”
For the second series Emily remains
resolutely American. For her birthday
dinner, for instance, she wears an LBD
with an enormous pink bow. Mean-
while her friend Camille (played by the
beguiling newcomer Camille Razat) has
a new avant-garde revenge wardrobe,
having broken up with Gabriel (Lucas
Bravo) at the end of the previous series,
shortly before he and Emily got it on —
which Camille doesn’t know. Think one-shouldered
architectural jumpsuits, sharply tailored jackets (Razat
tells me via email that her favourite is a black-and-white
check Balmain) and a black dress, plain from the front
but with cutouts secured by crystal buttons all the way
down the sides — no knickers allowed — by the sexy,
eco-conscious Parisian label Marcia.
You’ve probably never heard of the brand — and that’s
very much the point: Field’s MO is to use the shows she
works on to “give a platform to a young designer”. So if
Sex and the City turned Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik
into household names, then Emily in Paris will likely do
the same for Marcia, Coperni and Weinsanto.
‘Well, I know
those gals.
Sarah Jessica
thinks that
she knows
everything –
and she does’
French dressing Some of the looks put
together by Patricia Field and Marylin Fitoussi
for the second series of Emily in ParisThe Sunday Times Style • 21