Part of an ongoing series of 29Secrets stories, taking a deep dive into the history of legendary beauty products and iconic fashion moments…
By Christopher Turner
Illustration by Michael Hak
In the realm of pop culture fashion moments, there are a few that transcend the screen and etch themselves into the collective memory of a generation. Audrey Hepburn’s black Givenchy dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Princess Diana’s fairytale wedding gown with its 25-foot train. And then there’s Carrie Bradshaw, drowning in layers of silk taffeta and millinery drama, standing alone on the steps of the New York Public Library in Sex and the City: The Movie.
When the unapologetically fashionable columnist (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) first attempted to walk down the aisle to marry Mr. Big (Chris Noth), she wore one of the most elaborate, and memorable, dresses of the entire franchise: a strapless corset gown with a pointed bust and tiered skirt designed by the iconic English fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Though Mr. Big ultimately got cold feet and left her at the altar, Carrie’s ivory wedding look is one of the most iconic fashion moments from the entire SATC franchise.
Often referred to as the “cloud dress,” the ivory wedding gown was selected from Vivienne Westwood’s fall/winter 2007 collection by SATC costume designer Patricia Field…but, as it turns out, Field had something completely different in mind for Carrie’s big day. More on that later.
Through the years, the wedding dress has become more than just a garment – it has become a cultural artifact. Here’s the full story of the over-the-top Vivienne Westwood wedding dress that Carrie wore in the first Sex and the City movie.
But first…before Sex and the City
Before six seasons of Sex and the City on HBO, and the DVDs, reruns, hit movie and sequel, there was a newspaper column.
“Sex and the City” first appeared in The New York Observer on November 28, 1994. The column’s author and central character, Candace Bushnell, was then a 35-year-old freelance writer and a native of Connecticut who had attended Rice University and New York University. She had tons of talent and charm that came across in her humorous column for the paper, as well as a ton of anxiety over her career as a writer, her love life, her closetful of Chanel and even her ability to pay the rent. In fact, Bushnell said that one year she earned only $14,000 and was thrown out of her sublet. But she also summered in the Hamptons, dated Vogue magazine publisher Ron Galotti (the real Mr. Big) and socialized with New York’s elite.
Bushnell’s column ran for two years and then, in 1996, the columns were collected in a book of the same name. Two years after that came the HBO series, based on the book of columns and starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw. It became a pop culture phenomenon that eclipsed both the book and the column.
The series premiered on June 6, 1998, a year after the pilot, and concluded on February 22, 2004, with 94 episodes broadcast over six seasons. It spawned two feature films, Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010); a prequel television series commissioned by The CW, The Carrie Diaries (2013–2014); and a sequel series, And Just Like That…, which premiered on HBO Max on December 9, 2021 and is still going, continuing the story of Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte (sans Samantha).
Carrie’s wedding dress: from runway to library steps
When Sex and the City finally made its silver-screen debut on May 15, 2008, fans were already intimately acquainted with Carrie Bradshaw’s fashion-forward unpredictability. But no one was prepared for the wedding dress she wore to marry Mr. Big: an ivory corseted masterpiece from Vivienne Westwood’s fall/winter 2007 Gold Label collection that was deconstructed, romantic, unapologetically over-the-top. It wasn’t a dress you wore; it was a dress that wore you. And for Carrie, that was the point.
Westwood’s Gothic-tinged wedding dress originally made its debut on the runway just months prior to filming. As Sex and the City went into production, costume designer Patricia Field – the mastermind behind every iconic Bradshaw ensemble – was hunting for a look that screamed fashion fantasy. The moment she laid eyes on the Westwood creation, it was couture kismet.
“The bridal gown…was inspired by the diamond cutting technique,” Brigitte Stepputtis, head of couture at Vivienne Westwood, told British Vogue in 2003. The diamond cutting technique refers to the precise methods used to shape and polish a diamond to maximize its brilliance, fire and overall visual appeal. It involves strategically cutting the diamond’s facets at specific angles to optimally reflect and refract light. “Our bespoke couture and bridal collections remain faithful to Vivienne’s strong belief that femininity ought to be celebrated.”
The ballgown was referred to as the “cloud dress” at the time because of its unique skirt shape, which resembled a puffy cloud. To create the voluminous skirt, the dress was crafted from multiple fabrics and then separated into two tiers. The top of the dress used an angular corset shape called ‘Wilma,’ and featured a gold-backed ivory silk duchess satin, while the lower half was made of ivory silk Radzimir taffeta.
When the cloud bridal gown (look number 58 from the ‘Wake Up Cave Girl’ collection) was first presented on the runway at Paris Fashion Week in March 2007, it was modelled by Kenyan model Ajuma Nasanyana.
The original runway look that Nasanyana wore on the runway was slightly reworked for the Sex and the City movie. The bodice was tightened, which ultimately made the sweeping skirt puff out to even more dramatic proportions. The look was finished with a pair of Dior gladiator heels, a crystal brooch, a champagne veil, and a vintage blue bird fascinator with teal feathers that launched a thousand memes.
In a 2022 video for Vogue, Parker shared that she saw the headpiece and “thought it was magnificent.” She and the wardrobe team chose to run with the idea and didn’t approve it beforehand with director Michael Patrick King before shooting the wedding scene.
“We knew how we felt about it, and like many things…we couldn’t throw ourselves in front of the court and make a really reasoned argument. We had every possibility of losing the case,” she said. “[We] didn’t share or discuss withMichael Patrick King in advance, which was, you know, not fair, it was a little bit of an ambush, and when I came to set, he was like, ‘Why is there a bird on your head?’ And I was like, ‘Look at the bird. You would’ve made the same decision.’”
Parker continued, “Of course, you know, he argued against, and he wins a lot, for good reason. There’s a whole thing that’s happening always in his head. He knows stuff that I don’t know often, which I don’t want to know. But we won, and then, of course, he put it in. I think later on, [Carrie] was like, ‘I had a bird on my head!’”
A dress meant for a happy ending – until it wasn’t
In the film, Carrie famously received the dress as a gift from Vivienne Westwood – along with the note “Dear Carrie, I saw your photo from the Vogue shoot. This dress belongs to you! Love, Vivienne Westwood.” But the iconic fashion moment nearly didn’t happen.
Speaking with Access Hollywood in March 2023, Field revealed she had originally wanted Carrie to wear Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress, a black Zac Posen gown dubbed the “Black Swan,” that Kristin Davis recently revealed was one of her favourite ensembles from the franchise.
“I think I was inspired by her relationship, up and down and topsy turvy, with Mr. Big,” Field said about her idea to put Carrie in a black dress. “In a way, it was like it became a mourning dress.”
A Vivienne renaissance
The ivory Vivienne Westwood gown proved to be a major hit with SATC fans. In a delightful full-circle moment, Vivienne Westwood reissued the dress for fans post-film, available in both couture and ready-to-wear options. Fashionistas lined up for a slice of sartorial history, with Westwood’s atelier fielding custom requests long after the film’s credits rolled. Wedding dress trends were instantly redefined, copycat designs instantly flooded the market and a cocktail version of the dress sold out on Net-A-Porter within hours of it hitting the website – evidence of the “Carrie effect” taking hold.
Predictably, the lore of the cloud dress never really went away and in 2018, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sex and the City: The Movie, Westwood designed several pieces for her spring/summer 2018 collection that featured elements inspired by Carrie’s wedding gown. In particular, the items were created with the “Wilma cutting system,” which Westwood had used to create the original bridal look.
As for the original wedding dress? It’s still with the designer’s archives and is occasionally brought out and put on display in Vivienne Westwood flagship boutiques. Oh, and there was that one other time it was pulled from the archives.
The return of the Vivienne Westwood dress in And Just Like That…
The SATC movie moment and the wedding look stayed with viewers long after Carrie’s lavish wedding to Mr. Big ended up being cancelled. In fact, the look was so legendary that Carrie’s wedding dress ended up making a second appearance in the franchise on June 22, 2023. In “Met Cute,” which was the Season 2 premiere of And Just Like That…, Carrie slipped back into her Vivienne Westwood wedding gown for a night out at the Met Gala. While she once again accessorized with the bird fascinator, she repurposed the wedding look with a teal cape, matching pumps and a birdcage veil. Older, wiser, wrapped in nostalgia.… The dress no longer represented wedding day disappointment. It was now a relic of resilience, a wearable memory.
“We weren’t entirely certain that we could get the dress back,” Parker told People in June 2023. “It was in London and unearthing it was complicated – getting it through Customs in time and then making sure was this, in fact, the original dress? The colour looked different.”
Parker also shared that she and King, the film’s director, tried to give the dress “a new life,” but it was “terrifying to put it on” more than a decade later.
“It was really incredible and fun, and thank goodness it fit!” she told People.
More than a dress
Of course, the Vivienne Westwood wedding dress’s legacy is inextricably tied to the moment Mr. Big stood Carrie up at the altar in the first Sex and the City movie. “I put a bird on my head for him!” Carrie would later scream, drenched in tears and heartbreak. The dress, once a symbol of fantasy and fairy tale, became a visual cue of vulnerability and disillusionment. And yet – that’s what made it so iconic. In the world of Sex and the City, nothing is ever too perfect, too polished or too predictable. Carrie’s wedding look was no exception.
What makes Carrie Bradshaw’s Vivienne Westwood wedding dress so unforgettable isn’t just the drama or designer label – it’s the story it tells. It’s the ultimate metaphor for her character: romantic, messy, maximalist and emotionally rich. A garment that, like Carrie herself, defied convention and demanded to be remembered.
In fashion, as in love, the most iconic moments are rarely perfect. But they are always unforgettable. Except that dress “by no one” that Carrie wore for her court wedding to Mr. Big at the end of Sex and the City: The Movie… who really remembers that one?
Want more? You can read other stories from our The Story Of series, including the history of the tutu in the opening credits of SATC and the Christian Dior newspaper dress Carrie wore in SATC, and others right here.
