Why powerhouse stylist Patricia Field deserves her own documentary

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It’s 9 a.m. in New York and costume designer Patricia Field has sifted through nearly 40 racks of clothes for the relaunch of ArtFashion, an incarnation of the concept shop she’s been running since 2018. This a new hybrid gallery/clothing store is slated for a mid-October launch in a larger location than its predecessor across the street.

If you don’t know who Field is, her résumé is brimming with accolades. The 83-year-old has styled and defined big- and small-screen characters of their time: Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City), Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada), Wilhelmina Slater (Ugly Betty) and Emily Cooper (Emily in Paris). She has two Emmy wins, and BAFTA and Oscar nominations for her costume-design work. Now, a new documentary titled Happy Clothes follows the work of the visionary, capturing her process for choosing outfits for TV and film projects.

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But before her costume-design career, Field’s first store, Pants Pub, outgrew its original location and moved to 8th Street in the early seventies. It was in the thick of the eighties when her store started to gain rapid momentum, attracting people such as artist Keith Haring and fashion designer Marc Jacobs to work in the retail space. During that same era, she became friends with countless celebrities and culture changers ranging from Diane von Furstenberg to Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Her latest expansion comes from the rising demand for items from House of Vintage, Field’s own fashion line from the eighties and beyond (she hired David Dalrymple to design the line). Her success lies in her refusal to offer boring, minimal or muted sensible clothing department stores typically bank on. For someone whose motto is more-is-more and less-is-a-bore, the process of moving to a bigger store is a welcome change. The idea of downsizing outfits and objects for racks and shelves is, in her words, “just painful.”

“I have problems rejecting things that are bright and colorful and busy. … I believe patterns and colours and fabrics that people say shouldn’t be matched together can live together in my world,” she says via Zoom from her New York office.

Off-the-cuff moments in Happy Clothes capture her knack for gleeful styling and experimentation during long scenes. In a number of scenes in the film, which is available in Canada on demand, Field outfits actor Bresha Webb, who plays Renee Ross in the Starz comedy series Run the World.

The film also follows the rising interest in Field’s work through the years. Today, the Field fixation could be due to her role as consulting costumer in Emily in Paris or the fact that nineties and early 2000s trends are back on runways (from peplums to nude dresses). Field’s sustainable-fashion philosophy (mixing previously owned items with new ones) could also be a factor as it is gaining popularity among Gen Zers who aren’t connecting to mall culture and are tired of wearing overly accessible brands.

Field’s brazen tastes have been influential on TV and on the runway, many items worn by characters on Sex and the City – from neoprene and scuba-inspired gear to girdle skirts, Manolo Blahnik heels and the famous Fendi baguette (what is often referred to as the first “It” bag), the costume designer’s choices spurred luxury and vintage retail sales for years.

However, beyond covering the joy and business of being Field, Happy Clothes slightly touches on the people and communities who inspire her. Another documentary on Field called The Little House That Could from 2013 digs into how she was among the only people in New York to hire what she calls her people (she has identified as a lesbian since opening her first store in 1966 with a former girlfriend): queer artists, sex workers, drag queens, transsexual and transgender people. Plus art, nightclub and fashion icons such as Amanda Lepore (who said “doing a shift in Pat’s store was the closest thing to working at a nightclub”), Haring (who painted windows), Lady Bunny (who was employed as a live mannequin) and designer Jacobs (who once worked the hat counter).

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This downtown cache attracted Grace Jones, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and JFK Jr. (who was thrown out for calling salespeople freaks) to the store. “A good representation of LGBTQ people are intelligent, colourful, expressive and fashionable,” Field says. “I’m drawn to people who say something with their clothes and make that a type of free, liberated communication every day.”

The pro chalks up her power to see beyond the brands and expertly execute high/low looks for friends and artists who equally embraced the clash of class and trash, such as Haring and Basquiat. “We sold postcards from Jean-Michel for like $10. My loft was right above my shop on 8th Street and they became family. It was a wonderful to have that experience in a place where I would sleep and eat and dream,” she says.

The film’s director, Michael Selditch, says Field’s affection for her eclectic and eccentric downtown crowd helped many people reach the next level of fame. “People didn’t know who Basquiat or Haring were at the time. Obviously things have changed. You can look up those postcards now and find one on Sotheby’s for $20,000,” he says. “Pat was providing these artists and queer people opportunities for people to see their work and learn who they are when nobody else was.”

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She calls her proudest moments “life-changing collaborations” and says her close relationship with Canadian actor Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City is rare. “She was willing to get in my car and go to old clothing shops so we could find dresses by Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo,” she says of Cattrall’s keenness to wear the Italian-Argentinian fashion designer whose disco-influenced couture grew to prominence in the seventies and eighties. The pair have remained close, and while she did not return to costume the show’s off-shoot sequel, And Just Like That…, Field did agree to come back to dress Cattrall for her minutes-long cameo at the end of Season 2.

“Pat’s goal is to see the joy in collaboration” adds Selditch. “The connection Pat has with actors is very different from other costume designers or stylists. Many are prescriptive, they just tell the person, ‘Put this on.’ Pat wants to know what they connect to and feel.”

Author and fashion historian Marcellas Reynolds, whose books Supreme Models, Supreme Actresses and Supreme Sirens recount the impact of stylists and costumers in pop culture, says Field’s work on Sex and the City is part of the progressive development of American style through the years.

Reynolds sees Field as a bridge whose taste leaps from the underground into the mainstream and becomes trend: the epitome of what Samantha Jones once famously said in Sex and the City when trying to explain the evolution of a trend in the nineties: “First come the gays, then the girls, then the industry!”

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“Patricia is part of the gay, lesbian, trans, Black, Latino, Puerto Rican community – those are her friends and family,” Reynolds says. “She has never been about styling someone head to toe in designer labels. Her goal at her stores was to make something that club kids would want to wear and that visions extends to her costume work.”

Reynolds says Field’s most powerful magic trick is changing her character’s socio-political status with clothing. For example, if Sex and the City’s Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte were real, they wouldn’t be at a vogue ball in Harlem. “They wouldn’t know how to act; they’d clutch their pearls and hide in a corner,” says Reynolds. “Patricia made the show more urban by making the wardrobe serve as the fifth member of that quartet. She gave women a gateway into a world of risk with her styling. She allowed them to experiment in a free way that runway fashion doesn’t always encourage. What Sex and the City’s characters wore was the coolest connection to New York’s nightlife and queer life that many women at the time could only wish to have.”

Los Angeles-based actor and former New York nightclub fixture Pete Zias spent many hours shopping at the 8th Street boutique in the late nineties and early 2000s. Field’s curation helped inspire Teddy Teddy – a viral comedic character he created for both the stage and social media. “Teddy is a legendary nineties club kid, so naturally he loves wearing looks you could easily find in Patricia Field’s store – latex pants, leopard print, polka dots, sequin,” he says.

Zias, who hosts a show called Total Trash Live (which deconstructs and mocks tabloids), is one of many digital creators keeping Field’s street cred alive online. Recently a TikTok from podcaster and stylist Caroline Vazzana went viral, featuring an interview with Field and her long-standing claim that she invented leggings. Meanwhile, a throng of Instagram accounts – including @findingcarriescloset, @carriebradshaws_outfits and @everyoutfitonsatc (also a podcast) – post daily and spread the good word on Field’s optimistic yet fringe-inspired fashion. It is something Field herself is pleased with. “The secret to staying and feeling young is surrounding yourself with young, talented people,” she says. “They give me so much energy so I hope I do the same for them.”