Sarah Jessica Parker Opens Her First Pop-Up Shop on 5th Avenue in New York

by MARIA WARD

Photo: Jai Lennard

“Shopping is my cardio,” once opined Carrie Bradshaw, arguably New York’s most famous fictional shopaholic. Now Sex and the City alum Sarah Jessica Parker is doing her part to inspire fashion-conscious foot traffic with the first-ever SJP by Sarah Jessica Parker pop-up in New York on 640 Fifth Avenue. It’s T-minus 48 hours until the opening, and there is already a crowd forming outside with fans eager to catch a glimpse. The actress and designer doesn’t seem to mind and has made herself at home among the pretty pink interiors (not Cosmopolitan pink, but millennial pink), plopping herself down on one of the modular chairs that punctuate the space. She toes the line between cozy and chic dressed in gray skinny jeans, glittering Mary Janes, and a boatneck sweatshirt pinned with an oversize flower brooch—a Bradshaw signature. When her two adorable twin daughters Tabitha and Loretta point out the quirky accessory and ask, “Why?” she replies simply, “Why not?”

Photo: Jai Lennard

The glitter-flecked, color-happy designs that fill the store are also conversation starters and have been handpicked by Parker for party season, down to the stiletto illustrations on the wall. Eric Hughes of Wallshoppe custom-created the trompe l’oeil pattern fashioned after the Lucite shoe wall found in her boutiques (the detail is also printed onto the shopping bags and covers a limited-edition collection of iPhone cases). Parker, an avid Instagrammer, says she has already started receiving requests from followers looking to purchase the wallpaper. “We wanted to keep the rest of the space bare,” she says gesturing to the exposed brick and high ceilings. “It’s a very New York space and these are New York bones.”

Nestled in in the heart of midtown on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, the location doesn’t get more New York than, well, this New Yorker. “I have a sentimental attachment to this street, actually, because when I played Annie on Broadway, it was right down the street!” she recalls. “And Billy Joel has this album called 52nd Street that I love.” Parker then reveals that she will play the role of sales associate for much of the pop-up’s 10-day run. Naturally she already has her sales pitch down. “I’m most pleased that we have something for everybody here. We have flats and we have our sneakers and a very sensible block heel,” she says. “They would look really great with black tights or knee socks.” Consider us sold.