Confirmed: Carrie Bradshaw Has a Thing for Birds

Carrie Bradshaw's fashion proclivities are well-documented. There's the Big Flower Energy that dominated the show's final season (and repeats in the follow-up films and And Just Like That... revival). Wild styling choices, like exposed bra straps, mismatched heels, and avant-garde belt placements, also recur throughout the show's many touchpoints. Her tulle skirts and leotards did balletcore long before it was cool. And Manolo Blahnik is so central to the plot that he's basically the fifth lead. But none are quite as quintessential as Carrie's sartorial fondness for a certain winged animal.

You're not imagining it: Carrie Bradshaw wears a lot of birds. The obsession began with a Patricia Field-sourced Judith Leiber swan bag in season 2. The clutch, which Carrie hates but carries anyway, is so central to the episode's plot, so symbolic of Carrie and Big's relationship (or lack thereof), that it's not surprising birds became a recurring theme through four more seasons, a movie, a forgettable sequel, and, most recently, an HBO reboot.

Everyone's favorite fictional freelance writer certainly appears to be stuck on an Avian theme — much like she is in her love life with Mr. Big. So, of course, Carrie wears an outrageous bridal bird headpiece when she is left at the altar (again, perhaps representative of Big's lack of commitment). Why wouldn't she carry a feather-covered Ferragamo clutch later in the same film when she's starting to recover?

And Just Like That...'s second season starts with a bird-heavy few episodes, too. Spoiler alert: the girls go to the Met Gala, and Carrie, after a gown mishap, revives her cursed wedding dress and matching bird headpiece. In the second episode shortly thereafter, Carrie accompanies Charlotte on a quest to recover a Chanel gown that's been put up for resale — in what we can only assume is a fictionalized version of The Real Real's SoHo location — carrying, quite possibly, the bird fashion holy grail: JW Anderson's $890 Pigeon Clutch.

Thankfully, the And Just Like That... costume team, Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago, have finally confirmed what we've all been saying for years: Carrie has a thing for birds. After spotting the clutch with a friend on vacation (Fabien Constant, who coincidentally directed the And Just Like That... documentary), Rogers was smitten: "He sent me a picture on vacation, and he was carrying it. [And I asked] What have you got in your hand? And he told me it was JW Anderson's pigeon purse," the costume designer told InStyle.

She continued, "And I was like, that's a no-brainer. That's such a Sex in the City thing. Carrie has to carry it. And Danny [Santiago] was like, 'Get it.' And Sarah Jessica was like, 'Give it to me.'" It's a match made in TV heaven. Birds and Carrie Bradshaw clearly belong together, and Rogers agrees: "Isn't that a throughline of the whole show? A bird always turns up somehow, somewhere."