Patricia Field in Payless

Patricia Field was nominated for an Oscar yesterday, for Best Costume Design (The Devil Wears Prada), so she got to walk the red carpet. Field got pretty famous in the 90's for dressing Sarah Jessica Parker and her pals on Sex and the City. Main character Carrie Bradshaw was famous for wearing Manolo Blahnik shoes particularly. (They start at four or five hundred dollars and go up from there; since it was pretty far along in the series before Carrie, a writer, started making decent money, it's a mystery how she afforded them, but they were beautiful and made for some hilarious episodes.) MB was often called the fifth star of the show.

Field didn't win the Oscar, but she raised some buzz nevertheless. Never boring, she showed up in a fire-engine red dress designed by good friend and co-worker David Dalrymple. The dress clashed alarmingly with her kind of scary red hair. On her feet, unlike most of the starlets, who wore Manolos or Jimmy Choos, she sported shoes from Payless.

In general, Field is a mix of class and trash. The unexpected is expected with her. But in fact her shoes were a walking advertisement for her new line from Payless.

Reviews are mixed in the blogosphere. I applaud her chutzpah...the Oscars aren't even fun the way they used to be now that all the stars have stylists to make sure they don't make fashion faux pas. I personally thought the shoes were ugly--too clunky. But so what? Fashion is about a lot more than beauty. Nobody understands that better than Patricia Field.