The date was June 6th 1998, and HBO was rolling out the red carpet for the release of a landmark television series centered on the complicated lives of four thirty-something women living and loving in Manhattan. Its heroine was the newspaper columnist Carrie Bradshaw—a neurotic chatterbox made warm by the actress Sarah Jessica Parker—forever wrestling with life’s thorniest questions (“When did being alone become the modern-day equivalent of being a leper?”), while rarely managing to find the answers. No one could have predicted on the evening of that 1998 premiere, that the so-called sexual anthropologist’s quest for meaning would last six seasons, two movies, and an ongoing reboot.

Kyle Maclachlan, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall at the premiere of the third season of Sex and the City in 2000.

Keith D. Bedford/Getty Images

Easier to anticipate, perhaps, was the stratospheric influence Carrie—and, in turn, SJP—would have on fashion. The first clue being the corseted toile de jouy dress the actress wore on that 1998 red carpet, marking the beginning of a decades-long fusion between actress and character’s style. Then along came the Vivienne Westwood dress of 2001, the Narciso Rodriguez slip of 2002 and the Yves Saint Laurent ruffles of 2003. (And, of course, an endless parade of Baguette bags.) By the time SJP stepped out in an Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy ensemble for 2008’s Sex And The City: The Movie premiere in London, she had become a fully fledged, CFDA-recognized fashion icon.