Click here to subscribe for free<\/a><\/span>!<\/p>\n \u201cOh my, gosh! You can\u2019t make me pick a shoe,\u201d exclaims Sarah Jessica Parker (sounding just like her Sex and the City character Carrie Bradshaw), when asked to choose the holiday f\u00eate-approved pair from her SJP Collection. \u201cHere\u2019s the thing\u2026all these must-haves\u2026it depends on who you are. [Some] people love wearing 70 mm high heels, [other] people want a party for their foot, but they can only wear flats\u2014I think a Christmas shoe is what makes you feel festive,\u201d Parker decides. Perhaps Nirvana, an iridescent, sparkly version of a Mary-Jane, or Trois, a milky-white leather high-heel bootie, or Fawn, a perfect pump in a pale, blush velvet, will make our gift wish list and an entrance (or two) at a seasonal soir\u00e9e.
\n Strutting into its fourth birthday, the SJP Collection label\u2014a partnership between Parker and George Malkemus III, who is also the CEO of Manolo Blahnik USA\u2014delivers shoes (first and foremost), handbags, and an LBD. \u201cIt\u2019s a small company. There\u2019s only four of us, really, and we do literally every single thing ourselves,\u201d says Parker. \u201cEvery sample, every design, every market, and every sales appointment. We are in complete command of marketing and public relations with the limited dollars we have. It\u2019s a very, very, hands-on business.\u201d
\n Speaking of handsy, so are ladies, nabbing the handmade in Italy, single sole, eye-catching array of fabulously sparkly, vibrantly jewel-toned, or rich velvety styles. The New York City-based Parker regularly works the sales floor at Bloomingdale\u2019s locations in Manhattan\u2014not official public appearances with glam squad and paparazzi, but rather just Sarah Jessica running to the stock room, pulling shoes, putting them on feet, and talking to her customers. \u201cI\u2019m well aware that I wouldn\u2019t have this experience and this opportunity if it weren\u2019t for the millions and millions of women who spent a lot of time with me for many years,\u201d she says with gratitude. \u201cWe had this relationship and I\u2019ve never had an opportunity to meet them and to know them. They\u2019re a huge part of this collection. They\u2019re a huge part of what we think about when we design.\u201d
\n Shoe lovers can open shoe box after box at a host of retailers, including Hudson\u2019s Bay, as well as at SJP by Sarah Jessica Parker boutiques at the Bellagio Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, and MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland. But it\u2019s an L.A. story (yes, Parker also appeared in a movie of the same name\u2014couldn\u2019t resist!) that has Parker flashing back to (around) 1985 to when she met Manolo for the first time; an encounter that perhaps foreshadowed her own career in footwear.
\n \u201cIt was a rainy February day and very few of us showed up,\u201d Parker describes of arriving at Madeleine Gallay on Sunset Plaza for a trunk show with Blahnik; the then-emerging, now-iconic designer behind the eponymous high-end shoe brand. \u201cWe were able to sort of make our own [shoes] based on the materials that he had. I purchased more pairs than I could afford,\u201d Parker admits. \u201cI had a green American Express card that I was entirely responsible for paying off and I used that. It was out of my league and foolish to have done it, but they were very special to me and I treated them as such,\u201d she says.
\n From then to now, this January, Parker will return as Frances DuFresne in the second season of HBO\u2019s Divorce. In reality, she\u2019s been married to Matthew Broderick for 20 years, and the pair have three children, 15-year-old James Wilkie, and eight-year-old twins, Tabitha and Loretta. On her current style, Parker opts for practicality. \u201cI live in a state and city that has seasons, and I\u2019m running around, and I\u2019m on a subway, and I\u2019m dropping kids off, and I\u2019m running to a meeting. My style is really about what feels good and comfortable; what allows me to get from [point] A to B in the winter months, you know, stepping over snow and ice.\u201d
\n Parker also churns out best-selling fragrances, sits on the New York City Ballet Board of Directors, is a UNICEF Ambassador, and is the honorary chair for the American Library Association\u2019s, Book Club Central. In June, she will publish A Place for Us by first-time novelist Fatima Mirza, as Editorial Director of SJP for Hogarth, within the Hogarth imprint of Penguin Random House\u2019s Crown Publishing Group.
\n \u201cI have no one to blame, but me,\u201d she says of her stacked schedule. \u201cI remind myself that I\u2019m busy because there are lots of things that I\u2019m interested in and want to do. More importantly, I remind myself that there are millions and millions of women who are working two and three jobs, with little or no support. My version of being overwhelmed is nothing compared to most working mothers in my country and probably yours.\u201d
\n One thing SATC fans (aren\u2019t we all?) want for Christmas is Parker stepping into her role of Carrie in the third movie, which has been called-off. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s going to happen. I don\u2019t expect that I will be playing her in the near future,\u201d Parker says definitively. Instead of fueling the rumours around the highly publicized no-go, Parker presses on appreciatively. \u201cI have a lot of memories that I am fortunate to share with the entire cast. It was such an enormously privileged experience\u2026to shoot on the streets of New York, with that amazing cast and our crew, [and] also to have had this relationship with all these women, that I spoke of earlier, who gave us so much of their time and affection\u2014you know, I share that with them,\u201d she says of SATC devotees.
\n And let\u2019s not forget the shoes and the city! The parade of designer footwear that filled Carrie\u2019s (shoe) closet on the show inevitably inspired Parker\u2019s shoe-love and her SJP Collection. \u201cI played a character who spent so many hours in them, and in such a wide variety. I wore shoes from the turn of the century, all the way up to shoes that were just on a runway in Paris the day before. You develop a real admiration for the discipline, for the work involved, and for the shoe\u2019s history,\u201d Parker says. \u201cI mean it\u2019s a different kind of affection, but I love them, and I love being in business.\u201d
\n As they say\u2026the shoe must go on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This article originally appeared in the December 2017 issue of Real Style magazine by writer Heidi Hofstad. Become a Real Style subscriber and get the hottest fashion, beauty and celebrity news, enter exclusive subscriber giveaways and be the first to receive the full digital version of Real Style magazine every month. Click here to subscribe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":89262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[443,13788,4104,32081,33],"class_list":["post-89261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-designer-interview","tag-interview","tag-sarah-jessica-parker","tag-sarah-jessica-parker-shoe-designer","tag-sex-and-the-city"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89263,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89261\/revisions\/89263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realstylenetwork.com\/fashion-and-style\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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