I went to see Sex and the City with RheostaticsFan on Sunday evening, and I loved it. We had watched the entire TV series together — RheostaticsFan had bought the DVDs and over the course of several years, she’d come over to my place about every six weeks or so and we’d watch a few episodes over ice cream, until we’d made it through all the seasons.

(Our husbands watched too. Don’t tell them I told you.)

Anyway, the movie was just perfect for a fan of the series like me, plenty of female bonding and humour and love and weeping into kleenexes.

And the fashion. Oh, the fashion.

I know I’m a little fashion challenged but please reassure me…I am not the only one who thinks that most of the designer stuff they wear in the movie is ugly and strange, right? I spent half the movie turning to RheostaticFan to mouth, “WHAT ARE THEY WEARING????” while she mouthed back, “I KNOW!”

More than that, though, I cannot believe that the average New York woman spends that kind of money on clothing. Am I just seriously that far out of touch with life in the big city? I looked it up after viewing the movie and the IMDB reports that several of the handbags in the movie are in the $5000 range. Even the little cupcake purse that Charlotte’s little girl has — which I ADORED — has a MSRP of around $4000. And there’s lots of mention in the movie of the fact that several of Carrie’s pairs of shoes are in the $500 range.

Five hundred dollars for a pair of shoes! Five thousand for a handbag!

I have three purses, one is a hand-me-down from FameThrowa and the other two are sports bags from the MEC that cost about $25 each. I have about 10 pairs of shoes including all sports-specific footwear and I don’t think I paid more than $100 for any one pair. It’s not that I couldn’t have afforded it, if I really really wanted to — I mean, if I didn’t have a minivan to service or a mortgage to pay or three university educations to save for. It’s that I just could never bring myself to afford it. No matter how much I loved an article of clothing, I have an upper price limit that I think is fair and there’s just no going beyond that.

I’m not hopelessly square, right? No real people actually buy this kind of thing, right? At least not in sane cities like Ottawa?

Right?