We couldn’t help but wonder how much a Sex and the City fan would be willing to pay for Carrie Bradshaw’s iconic tutu — and now the answer has arrived.
After the tutu worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in the SATC opening credits went up for auction last month, it recently sold for $52,000. That’s more than 10,000 times its original price of $5. (Its estimated sale price was between $8,000 and $12,000.)
The tutu was sold by auction house Julien’s as part of a sale called “Unstoppable: Signature Styles Iconic Women in Fashion.” The catalog also included a dress worn by Princess Diana and a Givenchy ensemble worn by Grace Kelly while she met former President John F. Kennedy. (Those two looks sold for $325,000 each.)
While Carrie’s tutu is now an indelible part of SATC lore, it almost didn’t appear in the show. Parker, now 58, was originally supposed to wear a 1998 Marc Jacobs dress in the credits sequence, but costume designer Patricia Field wanted something that “wasn’t specific to the time so it wouldn’t date fashion-wise,” per Julien’s. Field, 82, found the tutu in a $5 bin in New York City’s Garment District, and the rest is history.
The tutu reappeared in the first Sex and the City movie during a scene where Carrie cleans out her closet with help from Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall). The trio are merciless about some of Carrie’s more out-there looks, but they don’t hesitate to tell her to keep the tutu.
Parker still has one of the tutus used in production. As she told Vogue in 2022, multiple skirts were used to film the sequence because of the moment where Carrie gets splashed by a passing bus (with her face on it).
“We didn’t do a lot of takes,” Parker recalled. “We rehearsed it, we timed it, as you do, you kind of get all the pieces together without adding the liquid. … And then you go for it, and I think we got it done probably in one or two takes.”
