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A well-heeled icon of fashion

Ellis Henican

12:45 AM EDT, September 10, 2004

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I was over at the Gap yesterday where, of course, I ran into Sarah Jessica Parker.

The oh-so-stylish "Sex and the City" star wasn't dressed head-to-toe in Gap products because she was wearing a pair of Gucci shoes with 4-inch pool cue heels. And whatever you might have heard about retail brand extension, they still don't sell those at the Gap.

More like head-to-ankle in Gap. Velvet Gap blazer. Silk Gap blouse. Low-rise, cropped Gap jeans that she had customized herself.

I can report all this with extraordinary precision because Gary Muto, the Gap's president, described the outfit for me, and I guess he ought to know. "It's all about individual style," he said.

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Apparently, the frizzy-haired actress has been spending lots of time at the Gap. And not just the Gap store where I saw her, which was Fifth Avenue and 54th Street. On Tuesday, I hear, she was spotted in a Gap at Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City. On Sunday, it was Jersey's Willowbrook Mall.

Honestly, how many boxy gray sweatshirts and easy-fit jeans does one skinny actress need?

Stop right there! I know what you're thinking!

You're thinking, "That's not fair. The Gap sells lots of things besides gray sweatshirts and easy-fit jeans. They also sell jeans — regular fit and other cuts — that you can customize yourself by punching little rivets into the denim and attaching little sparkly things."

It's a whole New Millennium, for goodness sake.

And that's not all you're thinking. You're also thinking this: "Didn't Sarah Jessica Parker play the fashion-obsessed Carrie on HBO's 'Sex and the City?' And didn't Carrie/Sarah Jessica have a famously insatiable lust for Prada handbags, Roberto Cavalli dresses and $500 powerfully-status-conferring Manolo Blahnik pumps?"

So why on Earth has she been hanging around the Gap?

All of which just goes to show you how sadly lost I am in the fashion world. I hardly know my Manolos from my manhole covers. The only supermodels I can name off-hand are the ones who've been busted for heroin.

But as the debonair Pierce Brosnan once said in a context not so different from this — he was talking about frilly women's underwear, as I recall — "I am prepared to learn."

This being Fashion Week, I figured I should attend at least one fashion event. And me being me, I figured I'd better choose it with care.

The schedule for yesterday had a fashion happening I knew I could get my arms around. Sarah Jessica Parker from "Sex and the City" was coming to the Gap on Fifth Avenue. Now that I understood. I have shopped at the Gap. I know where Fifth Avenue is. I have even, let me put this delicately, engaged in certain adult activities within the confines of the five boroughs of New York.

Who better for this assignment than me?

So here is my report from my little slice of Fashion Week.

Sarah Jessica Parker is just as skinny in person as she is on TV. And I have to say she seems really, really nice.

When she came inside the store and saw the giant crowd, she jumped up and down and squealed: "Hee-hee-hee ... " Then she signed autographs for a solid hour.

The Gap people hired her to appear in their new commercials because, as the company's marketing boss Jeff Jones explained to me, "She can take clothes and really make them hers."

Her friends call her "Sarah Jessica." Not Sarah. Not Jessica. That's what her agent told me. His name is Peter Hess. He agreed with a faint smile when I said that's a five-syllable mouthful. Then he added this: "She's worth it."

The fans seemed to agree.

"She's a wonderful role model," said Clarissa Watkins, a 20-year-old student from London.

"She sets her boundaries," said Tracy Scelzo, a Fordham sophomore who was wearing a pink "I'm a Carrie" T-shirt. "She is always true to herself."

"They are trying to put some style in the Gap," said Harriet Miller of Boca Raton, Fla., who said she was in New York happily waiting out the one-two-three hurricane punch back home.

You have to assume Sarah Jessica's being paid a lot of money to appear in the new commercials and tour the Gap stores, although none of the guys in suits would say how much yesterday.

I was going to ask her, but I didn't get the chance. She was ushered toward the elevator by large security men.

"I'm not a public speaker," she'd giggled a few minutes earlier to the crowd, looking quite terrific, I thought. "I have very little to say."

This being the week it was, she said it fashionably.