The Girl Who Couldn't Wear Make-up and other tales: So I didn't hate The Carrie Diaries....

So The Carrie Diaries premiered on Monday night and I have to say, didn't hate it. I thought I would because it is just wrong that we are telling a prequel to a tale that really didn't need one. We don't need to know the backstory of Carrie Bradshaw.

We didn't care about her until she got to New York City and started sleeping with everyone and wearing giant flowers. But nevertheless we have The Carrie Diaries. And though the show went against the portrayal of Carrie on the TV series (we thought she was supposed to be from a more working class neighborhood and have had a father that walked out on her but in the books her mother dies and the father is the good parent to her and her sister) it was still not horrible.

Annasophia Robb is adorable which helps and they got that blond boy that is on all the ABC Family shows but I think it was because it was trying to not be Sex & the City. It was just a sweet story about a girl going through a difficult time who falls in love with New York City (both shows do push the Manhattan is a man that I fell in love with storyline way too much) but with the added bonus of clueless high school kids.

But now let's get to the fashion. No one is quite as amazing as Patricia Field (I've included a few of my favorite grownup Carrie looks but I will do another post on all my faves!)

but the looks on The Carrie Diaries are also great (thanks to Eric Daman who made Blair and Serena on Gossip Girl into fashion icons) said of the costume design:

"I was very drawn to Molly Ringwald and all those John Hughes films. I think Carrie was that girl, the It girl that was a little off. I think of it more as the idea of a Molly Ringwald character, not the clothing necessarily. We also want to keep it contemporary and have an aspirational authenticity to it. It's about mixing and matching prints and shapes that you don't see every day, mixing things from different decades. I was actually looking toward Christie Brinkley and her fresh face when she was a young model. She had some great Cosmo covers form the '80s that I thought were very appropriate to Carrie, but also Carrie gets involved in New York."

I actually can't deal with Molly Ringwald's outfits in Pretty in Pink (I'm sorry but her prom dress was actually a shapeless curtain. Like why were we impressed by that? Anybody could make that) and I probably would have made fun of her in gym class too, but I get what he is saying. And the DIY vibe is very strong on this show as well as in the pilot Carrie salvages/makes worse a gorgeous black purse with some nail polish on it into a splattered paint masterpiece/disaster. But part of Carrie's style on Sex & the City was that it was a little quirky. It was super fashionable but then would almost go a little too far or would just add something quirky like a weird hat or like when she wore her bra over short.