PUBLISHED
August 10, 2025
As And Just Like That, the reboot of the 90s and early noughties show Sex and the City (SATC), will come to a close after its third season, according to an HBO announcement. One can’t help but reminisce about how SATC hit us 20 years ago and shaped us through the following years.
1998
I first heard a casual mention of it from my boss at the time. The title triggered a curiosity and when I got the DVD and began watching, I was surprised a man was watching it. Later, her clarified, he had to succumb to watching it because his wife was hooked to it.
Remember how Sarah Lee Parkinson as Carrie Bradshaw appeared on the screen in the opening credits? A pink tutu and a blue crop top with a white tank top underneath, on the busy streets of Manhattan, as she contemplates the swarms of people, sizes the traffic, a cab splashes through a rainwater puddle, startling Bradshow as she gets somewhat soaked.
After that, eventually, some 94 episodes helped shape an entire generation’s understanding of womanhood, friendship, fashion, and the messy art of falling (and failing) in love. What started as a half-hour cable series based on Candace Bushnell’s columns in the New York Observer became a global phenomenon. Today, Sex and the City still lives on — not just through reruns, reboots, and memes, but in the conversations women love to have about love, identity, and walking boldly or aspiring to walk boldly in a pair of too-expensive heels.
But why did this show take hold the way it did? Why does it still have a devoted following of women — and some men — who quote it, rewatch it? Why is it still relevant?
The answer is simple and layered all at once: because it was honest, aspirational, glamorous, raw, flawed, funny, daring, and, above all, relatable.
A mirror with lipstick smudges
For many of us, Sex and the City wasn’t just entertainment. It was a mirror — smudged with lipstick and possibly bated breath before interviews, proposals, dates, but a mirror nonetheless. The mirror reflected it all. The awkwardness of situations in life, the messiness of blunders we make, the trauma of breakups, the blissful beauty of close female friendships, and the never-ending battle between independence and intimacy.
We met four characters who weren’t perfect — and that’s precisely why we loved them. We secretly chose our own character. Some of us were Carrie, some Samantha and some Miranda or Charlotte. We could also identify our friends in these oh-so-relatable characters. They were not good, nor bad, just four different women who were friends. Who said people who are friends have to be same?
Each woman was a composite of contradictions, and we saw ourselves in them. Maybe we felt like Charlotte when her picture-perfect man turned out to be a disappointment. Or like Miranda, who couldn’t quite believe that her underachieving boyfriend was a great guy. We winced in recognition when Carrie sabotaged something good for something unresolved, and we rooted for Samantha, who was unapologetically herself but quietly terrified of growing old alone.
Even their humiliations felt like ours: doing a boo-boo in a relationship, calling someone too many times, stalking an ex’s new girlfriend online before social media made it easy. These weren’t just storylines. They were our stories — elevated and glamourised with better shoes and sharper one-liners.
The Manhattan magic
The show also made New York City feel like a living, breathing character — equal parts romantic backdrop and unforgiving playground, snowy nights, rainy nights, sunny days, windy days. If you were in your twenties or thirties during the late ’90s and early 2000s, SATC probably made you want to pack a suitcase and run to Manhattan. The walk-ups, the cabs, the steam from the street grates — it all seemed magical, gritty, and full of promise and potential.
Ever since, I have had the biggest wish to visit New York, walk the streets of Manhattan, where the SATC girls walked. Just like the four characters seem my own friends because I have lived almost a hundred episodes with them, sharing their ups and downs of life, I also felt I have a special connection with New York.
The focus on fashion
Of course, the fashion element attracted women audiences as much as the lives of the characters did. We dreamed of owning Blahniks. The visionary eye of costume designer Patricia Field, the show didn’t just reflect style — it created it. Manolo Blahnik became a household name, as much as Fendi baguettes, giant flower pins, nameplate necklaces, tank tops and mismatched prints suddenly became statements. Field blended vintage with couture, accessible pieces with aspirational ones. Carrie’s tutu in the opening credits may have been from a bargain bin but her shoes cost more than her rent. The contradiction was the point that connected with millions of women across the world.
The beauty of it all was that you didn’t have to own the clothes to feel included. Watching the show felt like flipping through a fashion magazine or a clothes catalogue, where someone like you — a woman trying to figure things out — was on every page. It made style feel personal. Women across the world recreated looks, searched thrift shops for knockoffs, and dreamed a little bigger about what their own wardrobes could say about who they were becoming.
The show didn’t just showcase established luxury houses like Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Chanel — it launched little-known designers into stardom. Everything Carrie touched turned to fashion gold. More importantly, the show helped dismantle the idea that style belonged only to the rich or the polished. It celebrated eccentricity, experimentation, and the idea that what you wear can be both armour and expression. The magic was in giving women the tiniest nudge that it is good to dress up and feel feminine and pretty and fashionable and stylish… and why not!
Being a woman
But it wasn’t just about clothes and cocktails. At its core, it gave women permission to speak — openly, boldly, with nuance — about things that had often been shrouded in silence, and in no way feel embarrassed or ashamed about it. From desire to relationships to fertility struggles and cheating, the show unpacked the full spectrum of female growth.
It introduced phrases that still live in our heads and have become a culture at large. “He’s just not that into you” became not just a mantra, but a bestselling book — and eventually a star-studded movie. Carrie’s description of the “za-za-zou” — that electric spark of a new connection — gave a name to something we’d all felt but never quite understood. The show became our reference book for love, and in doing so, it normalised things we once felt too embarrassed to say out loud.
It also dared to ask whether having it all was even a real thing — or just another myth we were expected to chase. It wasn’t afraid to show women making compromises, mistakes, getting it wrong, or messing up or redefining success on their own terms. In a world still trying to reconcile ambition with femininity, this was radical.
Deeply personal
For many of us, the show was deeply personal as it carried us through heartbreaks, career shifts, the giddiness of getting engaged, and the quiet reckoning that comes with realising marriage isn’t all honeymoon. Carrie’s writer’s block became my own. Charlotte’s idealism made me do eye-rolls, and then when I learnt her logic, it didn’t. Miranda’s sarcasm became my protective shield and (my favourite) Samantha’s wildness reminded me to become/stay bold.
My DVD player doesn’t work anymore but I still have a treasured pile of SATC DVDs deep in my closet. Nevertheless, I have watched and rewatched the series several times.
Because the truth is, SATC wasn’t just about four women trying to find love. It was about four women trying to find themselves. And in watching them, we began to find ourselves, too.
The cult or legacy
Over two decades later, the impact of the show hasn’t faded — it’s just evolved. The reboot (And Just Like That…) may not carry the same magic for everyone, but it speaks to something essential: these characters, and what they represented, are still very much a part of us.
The show shaped how we talk about womanhood, how we dress, how we love, how we fall apart and come back together. It showed us that our flaws could be fabulous, that our friendships could be sacred, and that even if we didn’t always know what we were doing, we could still strut our way through life, maybe in Blahniks too!
The show inspired many other series such as Girlfriends (2000), Entourage (2004), Grey’s Anatomy (2005), Gossip Girl (2007), and Girls (2012), but none could muster a cult following like SATC
The story of how four fictional women in Manhattan became real to millions, and this is why they’re still with us, every time we question love, chase a dream, or walk a little taller in our best heels. SATC will always be relevant for it created a space for women, their feelings, successes, celebrations, mistakes, messes, sorrows, regrets, closet-bursting wardrobes and hair-raising opinions. Hence, women globally don’t expect a man (creatures from outside that space) to understand their believe that the right pair of shoes really could change their life.
