The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
THE HOTEL CAST LIST OF SEX AND THE CITY
THE PLAZA
New York
New York’s most screen-worthy grande dame (far right) – which has featured in TV shows from The Sopranos to Girls – is the location of Mr Big’s engagement party to erm… Naginksy, or whatever her name is, in the finale of season two. We’re spared the details of what is surely the beigest of engagement parties, but the “Hubble” scene in the square outside remains one of the show’s most unforgettable moments. Double rooms from £479; telegraph.co. uk/tt-theplaza
THE STANDARD HOLLYWOOD
Los Angeles
The girls head to LA for two episodes in season three, as Carrie’s columns are optioned for a film (hello Matthew McConaughey cameo). Where do they stay? The Standard, of course, the original A-list “Naughty Noughties” party palace (before Chateau Marmont took the title). Many scenes were filmed there: drinks with Sarah Michelle Gellar’s
character in the bar, Carrie’s cutout neon green swimsuit by the pool, the half-naked man in the fish tank behind reception. It closed in January but its sister property downtown (above) is still open.
Doubles from£717; telegraph.co.uk/ tt-standardla
THE HUDSON
New York
In season four, Samantha starts working for – and later becomes involved with – Ian Schrager-esque hotel mogul Richard Wright. Though it’s never specified by name, many of the scenes were aptly filmed at the (now-shuttered) Philippe Starck-designed, Schrager-owned Hudson Hotel. At one point he shouts at Samantha for losing out on a travel spread in The New York Times to Blakes London.
See telegraph.co.uk/tt-nyhotels for the best hotel recommendations in the city
New York
Who can forget Geri Halliwell’s cameo and Kim Cattrall’s English accent? Soho House buzz was at fever pitch in the early 2000s, and so it was only natural that it too would have a role in the final series of the show. There’s a heatwave and Samantha (rather, Annabelle Bronstein of Sussex) manages to sneak her way up to the rooftop pool of the members’ club “where they mist you with Evian” – only to be ceremoniously thrown out.
Double room from £322 for members; telegraph.co.uk/tt-sohohouseny
MORGAN’S HOTEL
New York
“There we were at Asia de Cuba, waiting for my lover de Russia.” This is the one where Carrie plans to introduce new boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky, over a round of Cosmopolitans, to the girls at the celeb hotspot inside the (now closed) Morgan’s Hotel – except he doesn’t show, owing to pulling an all-nighter with work. He sends champagne though.
PLAZA ATHENEE
Paris
A visually spectacular backdrop to the show’s equally theatrical two-part finale, An American Girl in Paris. Of course Petrovsky would book a designated palace hotel for Carrie’s introduction to the City of Lights, with views of the Eiffel Tower from their bedroom (suite number 609, since you asked, left). Cue plenty of legendary moments – her asleep in the grey tulle Versace millefeuille gown on the bed; the “ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other-love” break-up speech to Petrovsky; the tearful reunion with Big in the lobby. Double rooms from £846; telegraph. co.uk/tt-plazaathenee
‘People come here to succeed. New York has vision, it has energy, it has drive’
stand for, care about and support?”
For New Yorkers like Burstell, iconic restaurants such as Morandi, Balthazar and Sardi’s (which, pre-pandemic, were off the list for being too tourist-heavy) are back with a bang. “You just could not get into them,” laughed Burstell, who also noted a renewed appreciation for the outdoors, citing the must-visit Thomas Heatherwick-designed Little Island (littleisland.org) – where Proenza Schouler held its recent runway show – and Central Park as sanity savers.
This, it seems, is the crux of what New Yorkers and the makers of And Just Like That believe in, which is aiding the recovery of New York and building new stories to attract us to the city. “New York is built on spontaneity and high/low culture,” said Andrew Bevan, formerly of Teen Vogue, who now works as a writer covering the New York scene. “When the city reopened all I wanted was a Dirty Martini at Odeon (theodeonrestaurant. com), ending up two hours later in a dive bar in the Lower East Side. We all feel the need to inhabit the places that survived.”
Bevan also raved about a slew of new restaurants, notably Les Trois Chevaux which is popular not only for its French cuisine, but its introduction of a strict dress code, with jeans, sneakers and shorts banned. (Should you forget, a vintage YSL jacket is provided for the duration of your meal – almost worth the faux pas.)
“When Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle reopened, I almost wept,” Laura Brown, the editor-in-chief of InStyle US, and a woman who appears to live a life even more fabulous than Carrie Bradshaw’s, told me. “We went back the second night we could in June, and it was absolute joy. It’s funny that the more traditional places that we used to say were touristy were the first “treaty” places we wanted to go back to.” The Carlyle is where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stayed on their recent trip to New York and they, too, beelined for Bemelmans.
The person perhaps best placed to explain the difference between New York in the SATC era and today is Tom Florio, the CEO of Paper Entertainment, a media business which champions diversity and the LGBTQI community, and is fast becoming a powerful player in New York media after decades as a muchloved fringe publication. Twenty years ago Florio and his best friend Ron
Galotti – the actual inspiration for the character of Mr Big in the series, who dated Candace Bushnell in the 1990s – worked together at American Vogue.
“Sex and the City really did reflect real life in Manhattan at that time in the early 2000s – it showed the s--t that was going on in media and fashion. One episode even shows what went on in my apartment! But it was an elitist world, and it lacked diversity. The new show will have to reflect diversity and check its privilege, otherwise it will feel dated immediately,” he reflected.
Florio predicts New York will rise again “because we swim in a bouillabaisse of diversity. People come here to succeed. New York has vision, it has energy, it has drive.” While he spends half his time in The Hamptons like many of his generation, he now sees Manhattan as the place for young creators to return to the city thanks to cheap rents. The counterculture created on social media means that there are also pop-up events taking place all over the city.
“New York doesn’t go back,” he says. “When this world existed there were institutions that you needed to break into. Not now. Creators are creating on their own terms, on their own channels. They don’t need any of that hierarchy.”
And Just Like That, it’s time to plug into New York again.
Overseas travel is currently subject to restrictions. See Page 5