And just like that, did Carrie Bradshaw just kill off brand?

Glenda Cooper, The Independent

And just like that... another Carrie Bradshaw relationship came to an end. The parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, a some-time Sex and the City favourite, has filed for bankruptcy. The landmark New York department store, with its mix of aspirational designer shopping and ache-inducing high heels, has found to its cost that people are no longer quite so keen to swear on Chanel and their mounting debt.

Whether its flagship Manhattan store will be able to stay open isn’t clear — but its glory days are firmly gone. Yet Saks never quite made it as an iconic Sex and the City name. Unlike Barneys, Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf Goodman, which were synonymous with Carrie and her girlfriends, Saks never seemed to get the same namechecks or love from the four main characters. Put bluntly, it was never Carrie’s shopping equivalent of Mr Big — a passion that she had to return to again and again.

Perhaps that’s why the store was quite so keen to rectify this when the much-maligned Sex and the City sequel, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, And Just Like That, came out. They joined forces on a major collab, including immersive window displays along Fifth Avenue and “digital experiences” — “SaksAndTheCity” briefly became a hashtag — so, finally, it could be the face of Carrie and co.

But ouch. It turns out, Saks, the customers just weren’t that into you. In fact, there was something rather sad — and, in retrospect, a huge warning sign — about its flashy window displays. These featured Carrie’s Fendi baguette, a cosmopolitan cocktail, and the wedding dress in which she was ditched at the altar: a voluminous Vivienne Westwood gown with a feathered teal headpiece. But these were all iconic images from the Noughties smash hit, not its Twenties reinvention. And, rather like Big, both died a sudden but not totally unexpected death.

For neither the show (which ended last year, in what showrunner Michael Patrick King euphemistically called “a wonderful place”), nor its new chosen shopping haven, had fully worked out what its new demographic wanted – or could afford. Certainly, last month’s Barclays Consumer Spend report shows the Birkins are firmly back in its box. Barclays reported that 47 per cent of consumers are looking for ways to cut down discretionary spending, with new clothes top of that list.

In contrast, furniture and garden centres enjoyed a strong 2025. Furniture! Garden centres! What would the thirtysomething Carrie have made of that, especially given the disaster of the classic “Sex and the Country” episode where boyfriend Aidan tries to lure her out to his rural hut?

But that’s the point. In Sex and the City, the women who watched Carrie in the early 2000s loved to see her keep her cashmere in the oven and bewail the fact she’d spent $40,000 on shoes, rather than saving for a mortgage. But by the time And Just Like That came out, the superfans had had to grow up and deal with the realities of life, such as death, divorce and teenage kids. In an age of austerity and global uncertainty, these viewers didn’t like their money where they could see it: hanging in the closet. They wanted it safe in the bank account. They didn’t connect Post-its with break-ups anymore. As Carrie might have put it herself, had Saks missed that And Just Like That aficionados had become less Jimmy Choo, more Dr Scholl?

Of course, the characters Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda did grow up like their audience. Which meant I couldn’t help but wonder, while Saks might have thought its collaboration would have turned it into Mr Big, was the store really the equivalent of Aidan all along? Nice to look at, lots of potential and a safe choice in the 2000s. And a total disaster in the follow-up.