And she did it in the most Carrie Bradshaw way ever
Ever wonder why Sarah Jessica Parker left Halston Heritage? Well, wonder no more.
Brief tenures are nothing new in the fashion industry nowadays, so it didn’t cause too much of a kerfuffle when Sarah Jessica Parker announced that she was leaving her position as president and chief creative officer of Halston Heritage after just 18 months, in 2011. However, it isn’t often that a designer opens up about why they left. Speaking at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, SJP finally opened up about her departure from the label and used an analogy that Carrie Bradshaw may have employed in her weekly sex column - by comparing her time at the storied fashion house to an ill-fated relationship:
‘Everybody said to me, “Steer clear of this,”’ the actress explained. ‘It was like dating. It was like the fellow that everybody said, “Don’t.” There were all these red flags, and my thing was always like, “I can fix him. Just give me two weeks with this guy.”’
Parker was appointed in January 2010 to revamp the US label’s secondary line - following the brand's relaunch in 2007 - after two seasons under designer Marco Zanini. Meanwhile, Halston had drafted in London designer Marios Schwab to head up the mainline the year before as part of the house’s overhaul, just prior to SJP joining the fashion house. Schwab left in 2011.
However, speaking candidly about her departure from Halston - which was originally founded by Roy Halston Frowick and was a bastion of 1960s fashion, loved by Angelica Huston and Bianca Jagger - Parker has no regrets about the time she spent there: ‘I don’t want that time back, and I don’t regret it because there is no way that I would have walked away from that enormous responsibility without learning something.’ She then quipped: ‘Sometimes, the fella doesn’t change.’
Nevertheless, as fans of the Sex & The City actress will well know, SJP has gone on to create her own eponymous line of shoes, handbags, little black dresses and even candles under the moniker SJP by Sarah Jessica Parker, the future looks ever brighter for her own design career.
