Patricia Field

Life and career

Field was born in 1942 in New York City to an Armenian father and a Greek mother, who emigrated from Plomari, Lesbos, Greece. She was raised in Manhattan and Queens, and has claimed credit for inventing the modern legging for women's fashion in the 1970s. She is the owner of the eponymous boutique Patricia Field.

Field met Sarah Jessica Parker during the filming of 1995's Miami Rhapsody. They became friends and worked together on the television series Sex and the City. Before the first season of Sex and the City, Parker and Darren Star asked Field to design the costumes for the series. During Field's tenure as costume designer on the series, the show became well known for the fashions.

For her work on Sex and the City, Field was nominated for five Emmy Awards, with one win, and nominated for six Costume Designers Guild awards, with four wins. She is one out of six honorees of the 2008 Reel Time Film Festival. She went on to return as costume designer for the movie Sex and the City (2008) and the sequel Sex and the City 2 (2010). She worked in the Asian market by creating the fashion behind the Chinese feature film "杜拉拉升职记" (Go Lala Go) (2010).

Field's television credits include Hope & Faith and Ugly Betty. She served as costume designer for the feature film The Devil Wears Prada, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Field, who is openly lesbian, was for many years romantically involved with costume designer Rebecca Weinberg (Field), with whom she partnered on Sex and the City.

Field appeared as the first guest judge during the first season of the Bravo reality television series Project Runway. Her eponymous boutique was featured in a 2007 episode of Kathy Griffin's reality show My Life on the D-List, as well as on a 2008 episode of Paris Hilton's My New BFF. She designed the outfits in Namie Amuro's music videos for her three songs "New Look", "Rock Steady", and "What A Feeling" from her single 60s 70s 80s, as well as Anna Vissi's music videos for Stin Pyra and Alitissa Psihi from her album Apagorevmeno. In 2011, she designed most of the outfits for the characters in a Taiwan drama called Material Queen.

In 2016, Field sold her iconic retail property on the Bowery, after being in business for 50 years, and continues to work in TV and Film. Field is currently the costume consultant on the TV Land series, Younger.

The charities Field supports include COAF (Children's of Armenia Fund) and The Lower Eastside Girls Club. Her support also extends through numerous LGBT organizations.

Among others, Field's influences include, John Galliano, Diane von Furstenberg and Thierry Mugler.

John Galliano controversy

On 25 February 2011, Dior announced that it had suspended its head designer John Galliano following his arrest over an alleged anti-semitic assault in a Paris bar. The next day, The Sun published a video on their website, in which Galliano hurls anti-semitic insults at a group of Italian women and declares "I love Hitler... People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be fucking gassed." In a statement, Natalie Portman, an Oscar-winning American actress who is Jewish and whose great-grandparents died in Auschwitz, expressed "disgust" at John Galliano's comments. Field defended Galliano by sending an email blast to 500 friends, blogs and media. She dismissed Galliano's statements as "theater" and later, in a phone interview with WWD described Galliano’s videotaped behavior as “farce” and said she was bewildered that people in the fashion community have not recognized it as such. "It's theater," she said. "It's farce. But people in fashion don't recognize the farce in it. All of a sudden they don’t know him. But it’s OK when it’s Mel Brooks' The Producers singing "Springtime for Hitler"."