Iconic rewears! A Met Gala moment! Carrie dresses all the way up again in ‘And Just Like That’ season two

Get out your nameplate necklace and pour a Cosmopolitan: Another wave of Carrie Bradshaw is about to wash over the culture. On the heels of the 25th anniversary of the debut of the original “Sex and the City,” the second season of the Max Original spinoff series “And Just Like That…”premieres Thursday on Crave.

Carrie’s talismanic pendant is still on her neck, she continues to love Manolos and Fendi baguettes. A year after the death of Mr. Big, she has emerged as a widow who has written a memoir about her experience — and has to narrate it for the audiobook — and is nearly ready to put her glad rags back on and wade once more into the dating cesspool of New York City.

“In Season 1, there was a funeral,” said Molly Rogers, one half of the “And Just Like That…” costume design team. “Now, with Season 2, most of us know what it’s like to come out of a period of mourning: you are celebratory.” This is reflected in the clothes: she cites saturated colours and exaggerated silhouettes, “throw a tutu in there.”

Her co-designer Danny Santiago (I spoke with them both at a group press conference), chimed in. “Carrie is rediscovering herself and her sexual side, putting herself out there dating,” he said. “She is someone who has always loved fashion and putting things together, but I think now she’s having even more fun with it.”

This is an ensemble show and, by the second season, the larger, more diverse cast of characters feels far more cohesive. But the heart of the story will always be Carrie Bradshaw, based on the writing of Candace Bushnell, who wrote a sex column for the New York Observer in the mid-1990s.

Deftly and indelibly played by Sarah Jessica Parker, Bradshaw was always sweeter, more whimsical and more moral than the source material: adorably flawed, but remarkably relatable despite her elite New York insider status. The success of the character’s transition across three decades is all down to the way Parker consistently infuses her with a big, exuberant heart and innate kindness.

We learn in Season 2 that Carrie is now 56 (Parker is 58). This is my demographic. I’ll admit that I did not relate at all to the racy, single “Sex and the City” women the first time around; I had my first child the year the series debuted. I still don’t identify with the rhythm of their lives, but now something has struck a nerve: how fresh it feels to see 50-something women enjoying fashion so much, and being so secure and sexually confident in how they express themselves. This is deliberate.

“I don’t think there is a rule for what you should wear at any age,” said Santiago. “It is more your confidence and what you feel good in when you put yourself out there.”

Bradshaw is back in the West Village after shedding her mansion life; a reunion with her old flame Aidan is on the horizon. Charlotte is an Upper East Side mom (and occasional momager for her non-binary teen model daughter) who starts to yearn for her former working identity. Rigid lawyer Miranda is now a Brooklyn couch-surfer exploring gender and sexual possibilities. Samantha, played by Kim Cattrall, does return this season, but only via phone call.

A standout among the new characters is fashion plate Seema Patel, a real estate agent played by Sarita Choudhury, whose style was modelled after Bianca Jagger. All of them look really good, and they’re dressing less for a runway show or nightclub, more for the lives they actually live. This suits them.

“At a certain age, you know what looks good on you,” said Rogers. “You are more fine-tuned. You know the colours you love, and what looks nice and what people have complimented you on. You have your uniform.”

The original “Sex and the City” wardrobe was created by legendary designer Patricia Field. She set what Rogers and Santiago call “the DNA” of the four original characters via costume, before moving on to do the same for “Emily in Paris” with “Sex and the City” creator Darren Star.

The wardrobe budgets for Carrie et al. are clearly much more generous than they used to be. The first season of the original series saw Field scrounging in vintage shops and off-price outlets. Now the sky is the limit.

“There is nothing we won’t look at,” said Santiago. “We have Sarah, who will try on anything. We have so many different places to choose from, whether it’s vintage, new designers people tip us off to, or designers who do special pieces or let us know about things before they actually come out. We go to vintage shows. We went to Paris to go shopping.”

Early in the new season, Charlotte’s Upper East Side friend Lisa Todd Wexley, played by Nicole Ari Parker, has a killer Met Gala moment in a red Valentino look with a feathered headpiece that resembles a dandelion on fire. “We saw that in Rome at the couture show last year, on the Spanish steps, and asked them to make it in red for us,” Santiago said. They also had the atelier extend the train to 12 feet for added drama.

Due to a genius clause in her contract, Parker has a vast personal archive of items Carrie wore on the original series and she resurrects many of them this season, a move both nostalgic and fashionably eco-friendly. One momentous rewear moment takes place in the first episode, involving a certain epic Vivienne Westwood dress. It harks back to a glorified but bittersweet youth but also represents a life moving forward, a metaphor for the show’s MO that could be summed up with this line: “And just like that, I repurposed my pain.”

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