Annotations - Finding Charlotte
- Nikita David
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
Whilst Sex and the City often fails the Bechdel test, we still can’t help but follow around the four fumbling, scandalous, flirty women as they set New York ablaze. Of all the women in the show, Charlotte's style evolved the most. Though she is depicted as an overachieving Park Avenue Princess, with 'woke Charlotte’ memes in hand, Charlotte is making a comeback.
The first time I watched SATC at age 12, I detested Charlotte. Exactly what appeals about her to me today, I loathed. Waspy, conservative and demure, she seemed to be the complete opposite of me; there was not a single thing about her disposition that I could relate to. It seems that Gen Z is experiencing a sort of cultural and sexual conservatism, marked by disconnection, postponed adulthood and a longing for stability amidst economic and social insecurity. Under this current context, Charlotte York is renewed. This ties into the current tradwife discourse in which traditional family values and structures, and gender roles are regaining popularity. But as Reddit user KikitheDestroyer points out, “It’s basically Marie Antoinette and her fake village” , meaning that this revival of traditional femininity is largely aesthetic and escapist rather than a genuine return to old values. It reflects a fantasy of stability and luxury, the performance of domesticity and romance without the constraints of hardships that historically accompanied them. It is also important to note that very few women actually have/had access to this lifestyle, it requires high levels of economic and social capital that have been withheld from the marginalised majority and thus has been solely accessible by the white leisure class woman, which is exactly where Charlotte fits in.
Funnily, Kristen David made a parody video of tradwife champion, Nara Smith cooking, and the consensus seems to be that “it's giving Charlotte York”. Out of all four women, Charlotte most reflects the traditional wife lifestyle; however, I would argue that she desired it more than practised it. Charlotte was still a deeply sexual and decisive character. She cross-dressed, kissed the gardener and even posed as a vagina model. Yet her comeback still reflects a nostalgia for defined structure, romance and traditional femininity.
Charlotte was the original Quiet Luxury girl. Her style could be described as a 90’s ‘gallery girl chic’, a carefully calibrated blend of refinement, grace, and visual harmony. The embodiment of 90’s minimalism. Charlotte works as an art dealer at a leading Manhattan gallery; however, her job is presented as more of a hobby than a career, as her main goal seems to be to start a family.
Throughout the series I had found myself wishing she leaned more into the art world. Though her style is already renowned and emblematic, it would have been nice to see her swap out her Ralph Lauren for perhaps some Wantanabe or Alexander McQueen.
Though her wardrobe could also be compared to an art collection: each piece is chosen for its compositional balance, its ability to evoke a mood, and its alignment with a clean, elevated aesthetic. Charlotte is the embodiment of curation; she dresses not just to be seen but to represent. Her look exceeds her personal likings. She employs a visual language of taste and restraint. The underpinnings of her style, pearls, tailored silhouettes, neutral palettes and soft textures are exactly the tools used to cultivate an aura of refined domestic stability. In doing so, she fashions a sartorial buffer against chaos and ambiguity.
While Carrie, Miranda, and Samantha push boundaries more visibly, Charlotte’s clothes are her frontier: she negotiates between tradition and evolving selfhood through what she wears. Her clothes always hinted at subversion. The red slip dress, the backless gown at the wedding—these are her moments of rupture. Charlotte is still a deeply sexual character, and this is often accentuated by her style (she also has the best nightwear collection). These moments of rupture are proof that her sexuality was disciplined but never denied. Through them, we see that her femininity isn’t a fixed edict but a terrain she tests. Over time, her wardrobe loosens, with more texture and variation in cut and colour, without abandoning coherence. Charlotte’s revival is not about replaying an idealised past, but rather performing a mythic femininity in a world of normative erosion. As we witness Charlotte replace her early dream of owning her own gallery with becoming a housewife, her style becomes a rehearsal of control and release as she navigates a new world.
Despite the atrocities committed by And Just Like That, Charlotte at least seems to have the most restorative storyline as she returns to the gallery and leaves behind her former role as a housewife. This seems to be a symbolic act of re-curation as she reclaims authorship over her own image, and that reclamation should have been mirrored in her wardrobe.
However, despite the subtle reclamation of her identity, And Just Like That fails to capture the true spirit of Charlotte and its shortcomings are most reflected in the distressing wardrobe. In Sex and the City, Charlotte’s style was built around refinement. In contrast, in And Just Like That, her style begins to loosen. We see bolder colours, patterns, statement accessories, and a greater mix of textures and designers. This is not to say that her style has ‘improved’; if anything, the opposite has occurred. She is still mostly dressed within her signature lexicon of refinement, the pearls, Prada, and polished hair, but in the revival, there was a level of chaos and disease that had entered her wardrobe. Of course, some allowance must be made for age. Charlotte is 54 years old at the beginning of the show, but given that SATC once defined an entire era of style, the sartorial direction here feels disappointing.
But perhaps there is also something to say about the chaos. This shift in her wardrobe mirrors what many women, and particularly younger audiences romanticising Charlotte, are grappling with now: the desire to reconcile aesthetic control with personal freedom. Charlotte’s current style attempts to bridge that tension. It wants to hold onto the grace and composure of her past self but infuse it with movement and autonomy that often comes with age and time.
In And Just Like That, Charlotte abandons all that was special about her style. I had hoped that, as Charlotte re-entered the art world, we would see her dip back into the sharp, tailored looks, but instead, we get this
Charlotte's style once captured the paradox of femininity, as both style and labour. In SATC, she seemed curated; her wardrobe was of aspiration and purpose. In And Just Like That, she seems unsure of what modern womanhood looks like. Perhaps this is the most interesting part about Charlotte, as her image continues to resonate with us because it exists in the fault lines between aspiration and irony. She represents a world of an idealistic world of polished stability, yet remains deeply curious and oppositional. In this sense, Charlotte also feels strangely contemporary.
On the surface, she could easily pass as a tradwife poster girl; however, she is far from its true embodiment. She is a testament to the dynamic nature of femininity as her clothes tell the story of not only a woman but a culture.
Written by Nikita David
Edited by Arielle Sam-Alao, Co-Fashion Editor
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