Carrie on regardless

By FIONA HAWTIN

The popular Sex and the City is fashion's biggest peepshow. It's the cheap thrill of watching some of telly's best fashion.

Now it's all but over. When this season finishes this month there will be no more amazing outfits to ooh and aah over.

Of course, it's not going to be easy saying goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw, the Manhattan sex columnist in Sex and the City, in a couple of weeks after six fantastic seasons.

But we must brace ourselves for the end of our friendship with Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.

What's going to be tragic is not having access to Carrie's wardrobe any more.

Unbelievably, the woman never seems to wear an outfit twice.

She appears to get changed three, four, even five times a day just so she - or, more precisely, the show's principal stylist, Patricia Field - can rifle through the Manhattan thrift shops and couture houses for the hottest pieces and put them all together in one crazy getup.

It all started with the pink ballerina tutu Carrie wore for the billboard advertising her column. And from there came sartorial statement after sartorial statement.

Not since Rhoda in the Mary Tyler Moore Show has any one character had so much clout in the style stakes on the television, with the possible exception of Dynasty's Alexis and her influential 80s power dressing.

Now that we're in the grip of reality TV, with ordinary people (well, as ordinary as anyone could be who chooses to go through all that for a moment of fame) allowed to dress themselves in their ordinary wardrobes, watching telly will never be the same again. Remember the first appearance of the corsage and how fabulous it seemed? Or the bright pink shrunken Kamali cardigan, Levi's cords, vintage headscarf and Fendi bag from this season?

Then there was the incredible full-skirted raspberry cocktail dress and jacket, all by Oscar de la Renta, that Carrie wore to McDonald's with the Russian; and the old Levis and Hermes bag at Samantha's chemotherapy bedside.

And there was the Lee overalls and J Crew gumboots at Aidan's muddy holiday home, and the elegant Narciso Rodriguez dress and outsize chiffon camellia by Chanel Couture in her hair.

She's worn Prada with Dior, Balenciaga with Juicy Couture, vintage flapper gear with a Chanel clutch and Manolo Blahnik shoes, and an 80s-feel Imitation of Christ prom dress with Blahniks, Hermes scarf and Lulu Guinness tote.

But there was still so much she could have worn for us.

There are reasons to be happy that the end is nigh: no more shoe envy, no more coveting those bags, no more wondering how we'd ever squeeze into all the teeny-tiny sizes, and no longer any need to pin on our cardies a corsage the size of a rose bush.

In a way it will be good for our self-image.

But how will we get our thrills when it's all over? Frankly, Coronation Street bad girl Cilla and her slapper-wear are not going to do it.

The best we can do is download a few images of the best outfits from the official website to remember them fondly. Like the vintage floral print opera coat that Carrie wore to open the Stock Exchange that came straight out of Sarah Jessica Parker's wardrobe.

That was something.