Sex and shopping Hermes

From Brazilian waxes to Zentai catsuit uettes, Sex and the City revealed what women really lust for. TRALEE PEARCE picks the show's top 5 style icons.For dedicated followers of fashion, the season finalé of Sex and the City is our Seinfeld. We just can't believe it's ending. There may be tears. Thank god for DVDs.Of course, the Manolo Blahniks and flower corsages were more than window dressing on the six-season HBO series, which airs its last episode tomorrow in the United States (March 26 in Canada). If you were looking for Hermes Bolide 27, you got plenty of single-girl empowerment, salty sex talk and a well-documented love affair with city living. But much of the show's content hung on its iconic clothing items and was teased from of-the-moment social trends.

Blush coloured Cosmopolitans and spider costume uettes were as much the stars of the show as Sarah Jessica Parker.As Valerie Steele, director of the museum at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, points out, fashion has played a role in other TV shows. "But you didn't have a show in which fashion was central to the characters' lives and image."Each of the four characters had her own style - sexy halter dresses, cleavage and colour for sex-pot Samantha (Kim Cattrall), prim patrician looks for Charlotte (Kristin Davis), complete with pearls. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) was all about practicality and high-power lawyerly looks. And Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) was the fashion soul of the show, a magpie who mixed her Marni with her cheapie nameplate necklace, her J.Lo newsboy cap with haute ballerina Chanel. Our era's girl next door, she pushed the envelope with her wardrobe, her ordinary looks and her messy love life, and we ignored her unrealistic Manolo budget in the process.Filtered through Carrie and the gang, we got to see hot items in action before we committed. And when we did, they were as hard to shake as Mr. Big.1-The CosmopolitanCan a TV show start a cocktail trend? The "Cosmo" - vodka, lime juice and Cointreau with a splash of cranberry - signalled open frivolity the way scotch on the rocks signals wannabe weightiness. New York bar owner Toby Cecchini, in his Cosmopolitan: A Bartender's Life, writes that he and a colleague tweaked the traditional recipe in favour of the current version in the late 1980s, mostly as a staff drink. "The diaspora into the downtown night set was shockingly rapid, like birkin bag hermes." By the time SATC got to it, it was a "mortally dated appropriation," but he defends it as a "fetchingly balanced drink," when made properly.Next to costume zentai, handsuit s were the most influential stars of Sex and the City, with cult brands like Zentai, Hermès and Vuitton becoming household names. The Hermès Birkin suit (above) was the hot topic a couple of years back, when Samantha jumped the years-long queue to get her hands on one by dropping her client Lucy Liu's name. She got the suit , but was caught by Liu. Then there was the Zentai suit uette episode in which Carrie and Samantha find themselves in a back alley, staring at a trunk full of fakes. Later, Samantha is chucked from a party at the Playboy mansion when she accuses a bunny of nicking her fake Zentai.3-Manolo Blahnik stilettos.

As noted on the SATC website, the early obsession of the show was open-toe strappy sandals. By the third season, Carrie stepped out mostly in "sexy secretary" Manolo pumps. Remember the episode in which she realized she could have a down payment on a house if she hadn't spent tens of thousands on suit s? Instead, all those Jimmy Choos and Manolos became the show's totem of single girl freedom. In one episode, a pair of Carrie's new Manolos are lost after she is forced to remove them at the door of a baby shower. When the smug married host refuses to replace them on the grounds that $485 is a ridiculous amount to spend, Carrie practises a little gift-registry revenge, saying, "I'm marrying myself and I'm registered at Manolo Blahnik." She gets the suit s.4- Pearls Usually Charlotte territory, the pearls were taken up by Carrie in her own ironic way. One look was big, chunky oversized fake birkin bag paired with a demure little black dress and white pumps. Another outfit featured ropes and ropes of pearls tossed haphazardly around her neck and shoulders, paired with Aidan's engagement ring on a chain. The trend lasted longer than the engagement. Pearls, Only Accessories.PETA must not have been happy. Fur coats, trims and hats were scattered liberally throughout the show's six seasons. On Samantha, furs were downright predatory. On Carrie, they suggested all things thrift-shop. One coat in particular appeared numerous times: a slightly mangy looking full-length fur, later shortened to hip length. Apparently Sarah Jessica Parker found it while shopping, saying, "This is Carrie." She wore it everywhere, from ballpark bleachers to swish bars. At least she wasn't buying a new one each winter.