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We Loved a Serial Columnist: New York Toasts 30 Years of Candace Bushnell’s Original SATC

A line down Fifth Avenue, a rooftop overlooking the St. Regis, and 30 years of reader mail: inside Observer's reunion with the columnist who started it all.

The line started on the sidewalk and didn’t stop. By early evening, it ran out the doors of the CORE: CLUB and down Fifth Avenue, a curb full of women in miniskirts checking the sky for rain that, mercifully, never came—a small miracle in a September that had otherwise made a habit of opening up without warning. It was the second-to-last night of fashion week, the air had the first real edge of fall in it, and everyone was headed to the same eighteenth floor.

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Up on the terrace, the skyline did what it does. The panelists sat with all of Manhattan behind them and, closer in, the Beaux-Arts shoulders of the St. Regis rising just over their heads—the kind of backdrop that makes a party look like it was art-directed. In a sense, it was; 30 years of Sex and the City, staged with the city itself as the establishing shot. The sun went down. The conversation started.

Candace Bushnell arrived the way Candace Bushnell arrives—all force, no warm-up—in a rust-and-gold striped knit dress, a carved wood clasp doing the work of a necklace at her throat. Lola Tash came in wrapped in bubblegum-pink satin, Chanel pearl drops the size of Ritz crackers swinging from her ears. 

Nearby, a blonde in a plunging bandeau top, more cleavage than fabric, didn’t miss a beat: “I’m on my period!” she announced to the group, flat, almost bureaucratic. “I had to figure out an entirely new outfit for tonight thanks to that.” Was menstruation off the table as party conversation? Apparently not. “Remember how Brooks Nader’s publicist turned her period mishap at Wimbledon into a viral moment?” another guest offered helpfully. “Whatever happens, it’ll be memorable!” She wasn’t wrong. 

Tash—co-founder of MyTherapistSays, the meme account that lobs sharp, over-observed one-liners (“When I win the lottery, I’m going to buy LinkedIn and then turn it off.”) at eight million followers every few hours—drifted toward a table where publicist Ana Martins had laid out a glittering spread of Frédérique Constant gold watches with turquoise and mother-of-pearl dials catching the last of the light. “Give me your wrist,” Martins said, clasping the Swiss-made masterpiece onto Tash’s wrist. It wasn’t really a request, but nobody resisted.

The panel itself was moderated by Jasmine Lobe—actor, model and Observer’s own party reporter—seated alongside Bushnell, Tash and Violetta Komyshan, a professional ballerina turned content creator with over half a million followers. Behind all four, the St. Regis glowed gold as the sky went from blue to black—the most expensive backdrop any moderator has ever had to compete with.........

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