Everyone wants to dress like Carrie Bradshaw, but not everyone can actually raid her closet. At the New York premiere of Hurry Up Tomorrow, Jenna Ortega paid homage to Carrie by slipping into not one but two looks straight from the Sex and the City glory days, including one of Carrie’s most iconic looks of all time.
Ortega hit the red carpet in the Dior newsprint dress that actor Sarah Jessica Parker made famous on the show. It hails from John Galliano’s landmark fall 2000 collection for the French house and features a scooped neckline, an asymmetric skirt, and an open back detail. But the true focal point is in the dress’s print.
The “Christian Dior Daily” print is a collage of headlines juxtaposed with portraits of the designer. Galliano drew inspiration from homeless people who slept on newspapers and Tramp Balls (a 1920s event where high society would dress up like the lower classes) for the motif. In true Galliano fashion, the print was rather controversial at the time, but quickly became a staple of both his work at Dior and his eponymous label.
Carrie first wore her now-famous Dior dress toward the end of Sex and the City’s third season. (She sports the runway look while apologizing to Natasha for having an affair with her husband, Big.) The dress later reappears during the 2009 Sex and the City 2 film, where she styled the showpiece with a flower necklace, a vintage-inspired handbag, and strappy Louboutin pumps. Carrie’s attraction to the dress was pretty straightforward. She was a newspaper columnist after all—one that was able to afford Dior, but still a newspaper writer.
Yes, Ortega isn’t the only one to wear Galliano’s newspaper print, but she’s one of just a few lucky enough to get her hands on Carrie’s exact Dior dress. The original piece sold at auction in 2024 for around $80,000 (a replica is currently up for a whopping $245,000 on 1stDibs), and Ortega likely had the piece on loan for her red carpet appearance last night.
Because just one Carrie reference wasn’t enough, Ortega had another SATC-inspired look up her sleeve. The actor stepped out to the film’s afterparty in a vintage Donna Karan dress that Carrie wore in the series’ first season. The piece, a salmon pink mini with spaghetti straps, became known as Carrie’s “naked” dress. Sarah Jessica Parker liked the piece so much she sported it to the 1997 VH1 Vogue Fashion Awards. Ortega, for her part, paired the dress with sandal heels and a fur coat—another Carrie staple.
When in New York, Ortega did as Carrie does.
