From Sex and the City to its sequel, heroine Carrie Bradshaw has always pushed the boat out with her fashion. But her latest choice of headwear has shocked viewers like never before.

There was other news unfolding around the world on 20 May, 2024, but in one corner of the internet, there was only one topic of conversation: what was that on Sarah Jessica Parker's head?

Parker had been snapped filming as Carrie Bradshaw for the third season of And Just Like That… in New York with an incredibly oversized floppy, brown and white gingham bonnet with two straps hanging down. "Is that a pillow case?" one person commented after Parker also posted a picture of her wearing the offending item on her Instagram account, which ended up on global news sites. "Wearing a diaper bag as a hat, clever!" posted another, while there were other less-than-favourable comparisons to Strawberry Shortcake dolls from the 1980s and Little Miss Muffett, sitting on her tuffet. "It's altogether unhinged," a journalist from The Cut wrote, summing up the entire outfit, in which the hat was paired with a striped coloured Ossie Clark dress from 1973 and Dr Scholl's sandals.

Now a year later, the opening episode of the Sex and the City sequel series featuring the giant headwear has screened – and fans are even more bemused. "Carrie girl..." one viewer wrote on X. "What the hell is this hat." Another added: "I saw the Carrie hat. I am traumatized." "I can get behind the wildest of Carrie’s fashion choices but this duvet cover of a hat is truly unhinged," commented another person, while others sprang to its defence: "Carrie's ENORMOUS hat in the first episode of And Just Like That season 3 is insane I love it lol."

Finally seeing the scene in context, we now know that Carrie wasn't wearing the hat for a prank or as fancy dress, but perhaps the most the most shocking thing about it all is that the item goes by entirely unmentioned by Carrie's friend Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) – and other passers-by – as they eat their ice-cream on a stroll through Washington Square Park. There's not even a single drive-by diss from the famously vocal New York taxi drivers. "This girl is so sure, so confident," says Seema, in reference to Carrie, but she's talking about her relaxed, on-off relationship with Aidan Shaw (John Corbett), rather than her alarming sartorial selections.

"Carrie Bradshaw has always pushed the envelope with hats," says Lauren Garroni of fashion/pop culture podcast and Instagram account, Every Outfit. "But this is by far, the most insane thing she's ever worn." Her Every Outfit partner Chelsea Fairless – both are self-titled "Sex and the City historians" – agrees: "To wear a hat of this magnitude on the streets of New York borders on performance art."

"It's hard to imagine the thought process behind the costume design," explains Garroni, "apart from the fact that Carrie is an eccentric dresser. Perhaps they wanted to up the ante fashion-wise this season? But I don't think that they were going for a specific look, because no one dresses like this. It feels a little Strawberry Shortcake or Holly Hobbie-adjacent, but those are such abstract references."

Some digging from detectives from the fashion world at the time revealed that the hat in question was a €450 (£379) piece called Head in the Clouds from the artist Maryam Keyhani, which she notes on her

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