AND JUST LIKE THAT...IT'S OVER

With Sex and the City finally closing its closet door for good, two writers from different generations revisit its fashion, friendships, flaws and fantasy—and ask if its magic still holds.

- Words: ANANDHI GOPINATH AND BENJAMIN WONG

Now, as the series finally takes its last bow after more than two decades (including And Just Like That's uneven coda), we're looking back at the cultural footprint it leaves behind. What did it mean to live through it as appointment television versus bingeing it as a completed story? How does a show that once felt radical for its candour read in an era of dating apps, #MeToo, and Instagram-fuelled style?

From our first encounters with the women of SATC to the fashion, the friendships, the flaws and the fantasy, we unpack the ways the show shaped—and sometimes failed—our respective generations.

FIRST ENCOUNTERS, AND HOW ACCESSIBLE IT FELT

Anandhi: I watched SATC as it unfolded on HBO in the late '90s and early 2000s, when television was a very different animal. The show was most transformative for me fashion-wise, as I was in the throes of establishing my own sense of style. Seeing Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie, with her unapologetically wild curls, felt like a quiet rebellion. As someone with curly hair myself, I'd spent years straightening it into submission, and here was a lead character wearing hers like a crown. The fancy outfits were great, but I loved most how Carrie threw on a T-shirt with a tulle skirt and made it look like the most natural thing in the world. That mix of high and low wasn't just stylish, it was liberating and taught me that I could mix elements from the universes I inhabited—formal, sporty, casual, ethnic.