Carrie Bradshaw, “Sex and the City’s” shoe-loving character played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is often credited for familiarizing the masses with luxury footwear labels Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin. Now the 48-year-old Parker, whose head-to-heels style off-screen rivals that of her most famous character, has launched a signature shoe line in partnership with Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus.

Parker’s namesake SJP Collection debuted Friday and consists of 25 made-in-Italy shoe styles ($195-$485), three handbags ($245-$375) and one trench coat ($495), sold at Nordstrom stores and nordstrom.com.

The collection seems like a Cinderella fit, for obvious reasons.

How long have you been wanting to design a shoe line?
For the past 10 years, people have been offering me this opportunity. I kept saying “No,” and I couldn’t figure out why… Ultimately, I was sitting at a lunch with a couple of [business] friends, and they said, “What do you want?”

I said, “I don’t want to make a shoe that costs $69.99, because I know it’s not going to be a shoe that I can talk about with true enthusiasm and affection. It’s not going to be a shoe that will last five or 10 years, feel really good on the foot, and tell the story that I want to tell.”

And they said, “Who would you want to be in this business with?”

I said, “George Malkemus, whom I’ve known for years now. I think I know his taste… [With their encouragement], I went home, picked up the phone and said, “Would you ever consider being a partner in a shoe business with me?”

He said, “Be at my office tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.”

How did you and George connect on a concept?
We both came to New York in the latter part of the ‘70s, and that particular time period in the shoe business was really exciting. There was everything from Bonwit [Teller] to Maud Frizon, Charles Jourdan, Ferragamo, Susan Bennis/Warren Edwards and Stuart Weitzman. It was the era of the single sole [a shoe without a platform], and that kind of went away.

What I wanted to do is to revisit that single sole that can look so feminine and beautiful and sexy on a foot … to go back to a simpler time [and colors like] matte purple, aubergine, asparagus….

The colors are brilliant. How does that reflect your approach to style?
There are only about three black shoes, two nude shoes and no brown shoes, except for the Alison boot. … I mean, are you any less capable at the office because you are wearing a purple shoe? No! I think you have to think differently about yourself…. All those ideas about neutrals and what is appropriate and what’s not [don’t] really have to apply, because you are still your same self. Your brain will still function in all the wonderful ways that it does.…

Let’s talk heels. No sky-high stilettos?
I didn’t want sky-high, because I think other people do them really, really well, and I wanted to show that you can have a shoe that’s not sky-high that is still significant and still feels sexy and powerful and feminine [without being] impossible to navigate the streets [in]…

Is there a story behind the female name of each shoe?
Some, but some are just names I like… Tanny is named for Tanaquil Le Clercq, a ballet dancer that I love. You know, it’s rumored that Audrey Hepburn’s real name was Etta. In all the research I’ve done, sometimes that story stands up and sometimes it doesn’t, but I like the name, and I think it’s a nice little acknowledgment of the role she’s played in so many of our lives. There’s Pola for [actress] Pola Negri, because I loved her so much. Ina is named after my publicist, Ina Treciokas, and Alison is named for Alison Benson, who runs my company at HBO.

Any family member shoe names? I don’t see a Tabitha or a Marion.
You’re not supposed to name shoes after your children, so I didn’t. It’s supposed to be bad luck. But the Bobbie is named for my mom. My mom’s name is Barbara, but everyone has called her Bobbie her whole life.… The style is slightly old-fashioned, like she is.

Source – LA Times

A true New York treasure, Sarah Jessica Parker today hosted a preview of the shoes and accessories in her SJP Collection for Nordstrom at an airy pop-up shop on 372 W. Broadway (next door to Cipriani Downtown) that will be open for three days starting this Friday.

Wearing a pleated, powder pink dress that played to the shop’s ladylike color scheme, Parker milled around refreshingly absent of a publicist and struck up conversations with an ebullient, “Hi there.” One needn’t much more to feel compelled to bring home a piece of the moment—i.e. a pair of her fabulous new shoes.

The Inspiration: Italy by Way of New York, Circa the 1970s
Created with business partner and longtime Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus, the SJP Collection is a love letter to New York, a generation of Sex and the City fans, and a very specific, idealized woman who lived in New York and Italy in the 1970s. In Parker’s words, the muse was “drawn from moments in our past or things we saw in the streets in Italy in 1979, or the crosstown bus in 1981.”

With a razor sharp suit and a Texas drawl, Malkemis recalled how Parker described her muse to him, “Think of the lady in Florence in 1977. She had a jean that was slightly flared and she had on a clog and she carried a bag a certain way,” she had told him. But the collection is not a literal nod to the ’70s, it’s more subtle and timeless, concentrating on the colors and spirit of the era, with references to designers like Charles Jourdan and others whom the duo have a shared admiration for.

How Parker and Malkemis Balanced High Craftsmanship with Reasonable Prices
On Parker and Malkemis’ insistence, the shoes are made in Italy by a third generation Tuscan shoemaker. “We wanted to make these shoes in Italy, we wanted to make them at a certain price point, we wanted the fit to be completely, inarguably perfect, and the comfort to be everything a woman wants and needs and should get for the dollar amount she’s paying,” said Parker.

With prices from $195 to $500, there are classic pumps (about 3 inches to our eye), strappy heels with bows and florets on the toe, espadrilles (made exceptionally in Spain, where all great espadrilles are made), lace-up booties in “luggage” brown, plenty of open-toe mules and sandals for summer, and, of course, there is a “Carrie” shoe, not to mention a pair of black patent Mary Janes. (Remember the Sex and the City episode where Carrie finds the black patent Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes, the ones she thought were “an urban shoe myth”?)

A few handbags—a roomy clutch, a tote, a small handheld—and a “Manhattan” trench coat round out the line. The color palette is bright, but the silhouettes are simple-chic. “It really was about the single sole and color, and color as a neutral. We treat color as if it’s as appropriate for the office as anything else,” says Parker on the line’s mauvy pinks, Easter egg blues, greens, and purples, and Studio 54-worthy metallics.

“This Isn’t a Licensing Deal”
One thing is certain: you can shop the SJP Collection knowing that everything—down to the signature grosgrain ribbon accents that mimic the ribbons Parker wore in her hair as a child—is a derivative of Parker’s personal style and longstanding love of fashion and fashion culture.

“Any work I do—Coty or Sex and the City—anything I produce, I am not someone who steps in and out. I don’t know how to do that, and I feel honor-bound by the opportunity and I don’t want to be told ‘here’s the end product,'” says Parker of her hands-on role. “There isn’t a meeting I miss or a phone call, conference call, or email. I am on every chain. I am in every meeting . . . This isn’t a licensing deal. This is a partnership. We own this business together.”

Malkemis said that in his meetings with Parker, where they’d sit on the floor with bowls of soup, she told him, “George, they cannot be designer shoe prices. I don’t want them to be Manolo Blahnik, Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, or Lanvin. I want them to be something that the woman who’s followed me as Carrie Bradshaw for 10 years on Sex and the City can go into a store [and buy].” And from the start, the two agreed that Nordstrom was the only home for the line.

Business partnership aside, the design union of Parker and Malkemis is one of total friendship and joy. “It’s truly one of the most passionate things I’ve ever done,” says Malkemis. “She is so generous and so thoughtful and so respectful of everyone, and to me that matters a great deal. In the fashion business you meet a lot of people who are not always that way. So to have a person that takes care of each person individually, with the same respect that she would some very famous person, is very refreshing.”

Source – Gotham Magazine

I Don’t Know How She Does It is the title of one of her films, but it’s also a genuine question you’re likely to have after meeting Sarah Jessica Parker. The fashionista of Sex and the City fame has come straight from a parent-teacher conference to discuss her current passion project, which, as fans of her footwear-obsessed SATC character Carrie Bradshaw will find quite fitting, is a line of shoes. The style icon will release the SJP Collection by Sarah Jessica Parker, 25 styles of boots, pumps, and heels as well as two bags and a trench coat, exclusively at Nordstrom on February 28 and will be in LA to present her new collection at The Grove on March 6 from 5-6 p.m.; she will meet customers and sign their SJP purchase throughout the event (as time permits). Parker took a moment from her whirlwind lifestyle to sit down with Haute Living and discuss how she convinced Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus to become her business partner, why there had to be a “Carrie” in the collection and the truth behind the rumors she’ll be taking over for Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Haute Living: How did the collaboration come about?
Sarah Jessica Parker: I had had some other opportunities [to do collections in the past] and wasn’t quite sure about them, but I still felt there was one idea I hadn’t yet pursued. It was my big dream, and rather bold of me to work with George [Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus]. We first met in 1985, but I got to know him while working on Sex and the City. I was having lunch with friends, all successful businesswomen, who told me to pick up the phone and be brave. [When he answered] I told him it was a long shot, and asked if he would consider producing a shoe collection with me. He told me to be at his office at 9 AM. Before I met with George, I knew I wanted to do a beautiful collection that I could speak of with genuine enthusiasm. I wanted it to be made in Italy, and I wanted it to be affordable, not $1000 shoes. I wound up partnering with someone who wanted the same things I wanted coincidentally, and wonderfully, someone who had a position of reference. [George] arrived in New York at the same time I did. As a young woman taking the cross-town bus, the same things I saw upon my arrival were the same things he saw. I wanted a collection that wasn’t so much ’70s, but where the inspiration [of the ’70s] was a driving force. I wanted to make purple T-straps that could be worn to dinner or work and that could be used as a neutral; I wanted purple to become the new black.

Haute Living: Can you walk us through the collection, how each piece directly recalls a time in your life?
Sarah Jessica Parker: The shoes aren’t drastically from many different points in my life. The inspiration was the late ’70s and the mod resistance of New York , Charles Jourdan, Susan Bennis and Warren Edwards and countless others that were prominently a part of the New York shoe business. [I incorporated grosgrain ribbon] because when I was a little girl, I had to wear ribbons in my hair every day. We were required to wear them by our mother, so we took them out of the ribbon drawer and ironed them ourselves. Sitting on the floor with George — where we conduct all our business – I said, ‘George, do you think we could put grosgrain on the back of each shoe?’ He was delighted with the idea and it became our signature, as well as a nice nod to my mother. We picked a beautiful, salmon-y peach color, which is incorporated into every shoe. In a wonderfully crowded shoe market, it’s a nice distinguishing signature.

Haute Living: Do you have a favorite piece or pieces in the collection?
Sarah Jessica Parker: I don’t have a favorite. There’s a few that I’ve been inclined to wear more than others. [The collection] is suited to different ages and sizes, it’s cross- generational, but there are certain ones I love. I’m fond of the Carrie, the Tawny in French blue, the Etta in charcoal and dusty rose, the Pola in black and the Wallace in berry and raisin The Alison is a great boot alternative for women who don’t like to wear a traditional heel.

Haute Living: There were rumors that you’d be filling Anna Wintour’s shoes at Vogue. Do you think the rumors were just the media’s wishful thinking that life might imitate art?
Sarah Jessica Parker: [That rumor] started because we had lunch a couple weeks ago. We were waiting at the elevator bank, and I was saying goodbye. We do have lunch occasionally. I was in no way positioning for that job, and she’s not going anywhere, thank goodness. There are about 1001 people far better suited than me who are equipped to take on such a massive, important role, but I’m definitely not the one.

Read our full interview with Sarah Jessica, learn more about her well-heeled style and see her full shoe colleciton in the upcoming issue of Haute Living Magazine Los Angeles.

Source – Haute Living

One might think that Sarah Jessica Parker’s love affair with shoes started with her infamous Sex and the City character, Carrie Bradshaw, but not so explains Parker at the Tuesday preview of her new SJP collection with George Malkemus and Nordstrom. “George and I had met long before I played Carrie Bradshaw,” she says. “George came out to Los Angeles to a store called Madeleine Gallay that was on Sunset Plaza, in 1985. I didn’t have two freaking nickels to rub together, but I came to this trunk show, and I ordered six pair of shoes. I must have done it, literally, on a layaway or on an American Express, it’s the same card I have today. George and Manolo [Blahnik] had swatches and styles, and we put together six pairs of shoes.”

That shared enthusiasm is what brought Parker and Malkemus together again on their 30-piece line of single-sole heels, espadrilles, flats, and thongs and handbags and trenches, which hits Nordstrom stores on February 28. Here, VF Daily talks to the twosome.

VF Daily: Why do the shoes all have names?

Sarah Jessica Parker: If you were a lady and a consumer of shoes, you would see that it’s uncommon for a shoe not to have a name. I think it’s nice to connect with the shoe, but I would agonize over every name. There were a lot of shoes to be named, and I took it extremely seriously.

George Malkemus: Carrie was probably the hardest to come up with, because it’s probably the most famous name for many, many, many women for many, many years.

VF Daily: There seems to be a 70s influence.

SJP: I think people are expecting one thing, or those people who didn’t really remember it sort of think of it as the disco era, but really, it was that single sole and those colors. It was the Maud Frizon and the Charles Jourdan, and those wonderfully flat colors, eggplant and aubergine, eggplant and grape, asparagus and teal. The simpler something is, the harder it is to produce it really well, but that’s what we wanted to do. George has this incredible shoemaker in Tuscany, a third-generation shoemaker who was equally excited to revisit this idea, too, because he knew that period so well.

VF Daily: What happened to those six pairs of shoes you designed with George and Manolo?

SJP: They were later stolen, those shoes, a bunch of them were stolen. All my luggage was stolen when I was traveling; it was very, very sad. From the time I was on my own at 17, it was just peering into windows, imagining, and spending my time on that crosstown bus, looking in the windows of Bonwit Teller, Bendel’s, Bennis/Edwards, Ferragamo, and Maud Frizon. You know what I said to my daughters yesterday? We were spending the day together, and we went to the grocery store. I said, “Have you window shopped?” and they said, “No, what is window shopping?” I said, “Window shopping is shopping with your imagination, so we can see everything.”

VF Daily: Has Manolo seen the finished products?

Malkemus: Well, I wouldn’t put anything past him, but you know what, it’s meant to be two different worlds. As I said, this is a different woman. This is a woman who doesn’t go into Bergdorf Goodman and spend $20,000 on shoes in an afternoon.

SJP: Maybe he’s secretly following @SJPCollection on Instagram.

VF Daily: It’s been 10 years since Sex and the City went off the air; did you realize that this show still has this cultural pull?

SJP: I think for so long I was completely ignorant of any relationship an audience may or may not have with the show. Forgive me for repeating it, but I did not understand—I think I was so entrenched in the work, and because I was producing the show, and acting in it, and by the end I had a new child, my first child, I did not understand this significance culturally. It wasn’t until the last episode aired, and I was sitting on a couch with my husband at home, and I was watching CNN, and a crawl went by, and it said, “Carrie ended up with Big,” or something like this. I was like, “They can run Carrie, like, without any point of reference around it,” and that was the first time I ever understood that there was an audience that was larger than the people we were shooting with every day. You know, the crowds had grown on the street, and I recognized that, but I never read reviews, I don’t read press, I don’t want to pay attention to the peripheral chitchat.

Malkemus: We have busloads of women—you know, there’s a Sex and the City tour—and they stop in front of Manolo Blahnik, and they’ll get out, and they’ll be these lovely women from London, and they just have to have the Sex and the City shoe. They will say, “I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought I was going to spend this kind of money on shoes, but I’ve got to have this, because I’m getting married.” At first I would think, You really want to get married in the shoe that Carrie got married in, but didn’t get married? She didn’t even get married in that, but she did have the shoe in a fantastic apartment on Fifth Avenue.

VF Daily: And today, people still stop in front of the Perry Street house that Carrie Bradshaw lived in.

SJP: Because we live around the corner from that, and I’m nearing the southwest corner of Perry Street, I try to make a diagonal beeline.

Malkemus: But the phenomenal thing about women who are like, “I’ve got to have a cosmo because of Sex and the City.” It’s like, really? Is that what you really want to drink?

SJP: It’s a nice drink I’ve only recently discovered. It’s actually delicious.

VF Daily: Really?

SJP: Yeah, they’re quite good. I had one last night with a nice amount of lemon in it, and it was delicious, and, of course, the bartender was like, “Naturally.” I was like, “No, I really don’t drink cosmopolitans.” I’ve only recently, like, in the very recent past, even considered ordering one. I felt so embarrassed doing it. I’m not a drinker, so I don’t know what else to order, but it was delicious.

VF Daily: Michael Patrick King recently said that a third Sex and the City movie could be possible.

SJP: I’m glad he finally at least said something. It’s off my back!

VF Daily: Is anyone working on this—writing a script, are there talks?

SJP: No, nothing, or at least nothing beyond how we taunt the public with various quotes.

Source – Vanity Fair

It’s been a decade since the ladies of Sex and the City last kicked off their stilettos. But even after all these years; a pair of blockbuster films; and a very real re-examination of what it means to live, date, and shop in New York, few women define our relationship with shoes like Sarah Jessica Parker’s Manolo-sporting Carrie Bradshaw. This week, the actress will launch a line of her very own with (who else?) Manolo Blahnik CEO George Malkemus. The wares are simple, single-soled, everyday pumps, flats, and sandals that will retail in the $300 range at Nordstrom starting February 28. No sky-high spikes or flame-embellished mules here. Just Italian-crafted (save the Spanish-made espadrilles), warm-hued basics meant for the women looking for a taste of Carrie’s sartorial adventures. We sat down with Parker and Malkemus to talk about why color is the new neutral, what it takes to design the perfect—and not too cheap, not too pricey—heel, and how the SJP shoe philosophy has evolved over the years.

How did the collection come about?
Sarah Jessica Parker: The opportunities had been orbiting and I kept having a hard time saying yes—and that puzzled me. I would honestly lay in bed at night and think to myself, “What is the problem?” And I went to lunch one day with a group of successful women, and they were encouraging me to do a shoe line. They said, “Well, what’s the problem? You have all this money and all these opportunities.” And I said, “It’s just not about that, obviously. Do you know what? To be honest, what I would really love is to be a partner with George.” I didn’t know him super well, but we had spent the past twelve years working together on Sex and the City and I certainly admired his business and the way he conducted his relationship with Pat Field and me. And they said, “Why don’t you call him?” And I said, “You know what? Screw it. I’m just going to be brave. Because the worst he can say is ‘no.’”

George Malkemus: Which I didn’t!

SJP: And so began this thrilling conversation.

Can you tell me a bit about the concept behind the collection?
SJP: We wanted to revisit the single sole—where did it go? We found, much to our delight, that our reference points are the same, and we had an idea of this particular woman in our head. She wears color as a neutral and doesn’t think black totally is necessary. “Appropriate” footwear was not something that we were interested in. And we thought of all those great shoemakers from the late seventies, all those wonderful shoe stores…that’s how it all began. George found us a great shoemaker in Tuscany.

GM: Third generation.

SJP: We found a great person in Spain to make our espadrilles—to really make the shoes the way we wanted at a price point I felt comfortable with.

The shoes are an investment, but they’re not unobtainable.
GM: That’s the key word! Investment. That’s the thing we want to have. If you have a pump from Sarah Jessica’s collection, five years from now that pump will still be in our collection in many different colorways.

SJP: You shouldn’t feel regretful when you look in your closet and think, “Boy, that feels out of fashion.”

Well, these shoes are simple. There’s nothing super-trendy about them.
SJP: That wouldn’t be something I would do well.

GM: And I don’t think that’s what I would want us to do. I take personal offense when a woman spends huge amounts of money, and then after a certain amount of time, feels like she can’t wear it. Or, if she walks into a party and someone says, “Oh, my God! You wore those last wedding when so-and-so got married for the first time! And now they’re getting married for the second time and you’re still wearing the same shoes…and you’re still not married! Because you bought those shoes!”

SJP: Wow! What an amazing leap to those connections!

So who was this woman you were envisioning?
SJP: The idea in my head is this woman who’s walking down the streets of Florence and she has a bag with a little piece of hardware and she’s in a jean with a simple flare. She’s wearing a Henley. It’s that late seventies, very clean, simple, superchic—but not better than you or me. Just simply getting dressed in the morning and being herself. That’s what I learned from my mother. And that’s what I learned from my grandmother. Extremely simple. Beautiful. Sexy. Feminine shoe, bag, coat.

GM: Not overdone. It’s like the perfect white shirt or the perfect little black dress. It’s so easy to talk about those things, but they’re the hardest things to make. To make a beautiful, simple shoe is not easy, and [Sarah Jessica] got that.

What were the challenges in designing this collection?
GM: To make shoes at the price she wanted was challenging. It’s so lovely to have a partner who cares about every little thing that we do. Ten million women watched Sex and the City. You hear people say, “God, I love Carrie! That’s me!” And I’m like, “You live in Iowa. How is that you?” And she says, “You know what? It is me in some way.” That’s the woman Sarah Jessica wants to make shoes for.

Has what you want in a shoe changed since the Sex and the City days?
SJP: Well, the character I played had a very—some might say it was a reckless relationship with shoes. Financially, she wasn’t particularly careful or prudent. My tastes have changed. But if I saw a beautiful shoe ten or fifteen years ago, I’m inclined to say that today I would still think, “My God. That’s a beautiful shoe.” What I wear has changed because if I’m able, I take my children to school every day, and I dress for the weather. I was never as committed a consumer as Carrie. She will buy anything. She will buy a trendy shoe.

What are you excited about as you move forward with this project?
SJP: I’m nervous. I’m nervous that George has invested so much time and effort and money into this project. Will it prove to be worth it? Will people respond to these shoes? I’m excited to have the opportunity, but I’m extremely nervous. I’m going to five cities to talk about the shoes, and this is what I will hear: “Are you sure I can wear this to work?” And I’ll say, “Why does this make you any less capable in the office than your black pump?” Who told us these things? No one’s at fault, but it’s a real adjustment to say to someone, “Absolutely, you can wear that to your meeting. Absolutely, you can wear that to your parent-teacher conference or for a wedding.”

GM: Sarah Jessica is saying, “It’s OK!”

SJP: I’m not going to hold them hostage!

You’re giving them options.
SJP: Yes. It’s been interesting, too. There are women who wouldn’t feel confident wearing this teal pump. Women want to wear the teal. They’re just slightly afraid that somehow it diminishes them. They think the shoes aren’t as smart or as serious. Women just really need to know that it is all right if they want to. We’ll always have this in black for them. But why not French navy?

Source – Style.com