How Patricia Field ‘reunited’ Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall

And it worked. Fans of the show still buy $US140 ($210) replicas of the tutu – Parker has the original – from Field’s gallery in Lower Manhattan, a more sedate space than the store she ran for nearly 50 years, which in the 1980s was a hangout for artists, club kids and future celebrities, including RuPaul and Laverne Cox (John F. Kennedy Jr was reportedly barred once for making anti-trans slurs about the patrons). It was also where a young Selditch spent time, but it was only while making the 2019 documentary American Style that he zeroed on in on Field as a documentary subject.

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The film’s opening scene, which shows Field swimming in a pool covered in tiled mosaics, was designed to surprise. “I wanted people to be in the theatre wondering, ‘Am I in the right [movie]?’” he says.

“Yeah, maybe they would anticipate the opening scene would be, like, at a fashion show,” Field adds.

Instead, Happy Clothes takes the viewer inside Field’s “process”, scouring vintage fairs for tchotchkes, and to fittings with the cast of Run the World, billed as an all-black SATC. Through these snippets, we’re given a taste of some of Field’s mantras – “As long as the colours match, you can f–k around with the patterns” – and her views on modern style.

“Today the fashion is so depressing,” she says in the film, later explaining she has grown bored by the overwhelming uniformity of dressing.

“What I call ‘depression wear’ fashion, as opposed to ‘celebratory fashion’ … Fashion definitely is a reflection of the time that we are living in,” she says. “I use the example of the 1920s – people were celebratory … These days it’s more, I don’t know why, but maybe people feel getting overdressed isn’t cool.”

For Field, there ain’t no such thing.

Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 5, 7 and 19. miff.com.au. The Age is a festival media partner.

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