When Patricia Field flew into Singapore for the inaugural Digital Fashion Week, the Korean rapper Psy was the name on everyone’s lips. The stylist behind Sex and the City, Ugly Betty and The Devil Wears Prada said that Asian pop culture, K-Pop in particular, would shape what people wore in 2013.
Her view was blunt. Celebrities, not designers, were now setting the look, and Psy’s wardrobe was the sort that people would copy.
The moment: K-Pop at the centre of style
Field compared Psy’s sudden arrival to Lady Gaga’s first breakthrough: it came out of nowhere and changed what people noticed. She argued that pop culture had become so celebrity-driven that stars were taking over the designer’s role. Many were also launching their own labels, which she thought was fair enough.
She said she spotted trends early through her New York boutique. Its customers were young, adventurous dressers whose styling tended to spread outward over time, so the shop worked as her barometer.
What she expected to see in 2013
Her headline prediction was clothing and accessories that looked like weapons. Spikes and heavy hardware were turning up everywhere in her world, she said. Her boutique stocked brass-knuckle rings that were, as she put it, genuine weapons.
She also saw a return of 1990s fashion, with exaggerated shapes and bright colours.
The one trend she wanted left in the past was the skirt with a deep slit. She said it looks wonderful on the right wearer but had been overused until it stopped looking glamorous.
Designers and places she backed
Field named The Blonds, a New York duo who mostly make custom pieces for celebrities such as Beyoncé, Rihanna and Britney Spears, as a team to know. She praised their glamour, glitter and couture. She also admired Jeremy Scott for his humour and for keeping his aesthetic tightly focused.
Among Asian-American designers she ranked Alexander Wang first. She described his work as modern and in step with the economic and cultural moment, which she thought was the quality that future successful designers would share.
She was cautious about a single “Asian style”. She noted that Asia is a young market, so younger styles dominate, and that Tokyo’s Harajuku look had spread across the region, including South Korea and China.
She had recent regional experience herself. In the previous year she had styled the Japanese singer Namie Amuro and the cast of the Taiwanese drama Material Queen.
She tipped California as a rising fashion centre. Her reasoning was that most of the world wears jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, not French couture. She also expected new designers to emerge in China and India, where the production and technology were.
The stylist who disliked trends
For all the predictions, Field said she was anti-trend. Her wish for 2013 was for women to know themselves, feel comfortable and dress with individuality, not like robots. Asked about personal resolutions, she said she had none, because her style did not change from year to year.
Where Field went next
Her career kept growing after the Singapore trip. She reunited with Sex and the City creator Darren Star on Netflix’s Emily in Paris. The series debuted in 2020, and Field served as consulting costume designer. She hired the Paris-based costume designer Marylin Fitoussi for local knowledge, according to Fashionista.
Speaking to Variety in 2022 about the show’s second season, she said fashion had become rather monotonous, with jeans and sneakers everywhere. That, she said, was a reason to make Emily’s wardrobe more colourful and optimistic. It is the same anti-uniform instinct she voiced in 2012–13.
Her life and work are now the subject of a documentary, Happy Clothes, according to The Globe and Mail. The paper noted that she has two Emmy wins and BAFTA and Oscar nominations for her costume design. Her memoir, Pat in the City, traces her path from a Queens childhood to her downtown New York boutique and to television.