I Miss Carrie Bradshaw's Old Apartment (And Everything It Stood For)

And Just Like That... is, in many ways, the story of a woman trying to find herself through real estate.

Published: June 15, 2025

I Miss Carrie Bradshaw's Old Apartment (And Everything It Stood For) — Photo: Courtesy of HBO

"I'm a big girl in a big city with a big house to furnish.” Minutes into the season three premiere of And Just Like That... the humble viewer is confronted with the not-so-humble quandary befuddling our heroine: She's got fabric—and a relationship—on backorder. I couldn't help but wonder...has Carrie left the rest of behind?

It seems that way, even if the show is hesitant to admit it. Carrie now resembles a protagonist in a Nancy Meyers movie much more so than her once financially-illiterate self. They say money changes people, but instead of engaging with the complexity of inheriting her husband's wealth, we're asked to believe that Carrie is still, effectively, from the block, even if that block now comes with a key to the city's only private park.

Related article: Carrie Bradshaw In And Just Like That Is Right — Modern Dating Really Is Ruinous

I, for one, am not buying it. A particular scene in episode 15, season 4 of Sex And The City feels as apt a metaphor for my feelings now as it was for Carrie's then. Her fiancé, Aidan Shaw (John Corbett), has purchased the apartment next door to hers and is taking a sledge-hammer to a wall that divides the two. As he begins to break through, Carrie panics, eventually shouting at him to stop, unable to face her impending new reality as it takes physical form.

Fast forward twenty-odd years and this sums up my relationship with And Just Like That... The show is a proverbial sledge-hammer, demolishing what I loved about the way Carrie lived—shoes in the oven, bed in the living room, cigarettes inside—to make way for unbridled real estate porn. This isn't Selling The City. It's not even The Real Housewives. What happened to the girl who would buy Vogue instead of groceries because she felt it fed her more?

I Miss Carrie Old Apartment (And Everything It Stood For) — Photo: Courtesy of HBO

There was something honest about the way Carrie lived in Sex And The City that isn't true of her character today: She had constraints. She was limited by her budget, her love life, her career prospects. (A shame "Little Cathy" and her magic cigarettes wasn't green lit.) That relatability is why fans still make the pilgrimage to her apartment's West Village façade. (Or used to, before it was gated.) SATC knew this, celebrating the ways in which Carrie was able to live authentically even if it meant accidentally spending $40,000 on Manolo Blahniks.

Now, that neighborhood is full of young people who casually spend that much (if not double) on rent in a year, while Carrie has become an archive of the eccentricity she once embodied, running around the empty halls of her Gramercy Park townhouse like a yassified Miss Havisham.

And Just Like That... is, in many ways, the story of a woman trying to find herself through real estate. It eschews the intimacy of decoration in favor of the unflinching logic of an asset class: You get what you pay for. Carrie pays for a lot. Without limits to run up against, who will she become? I'm not sure I want to find out.

This article was first seen on ELLE DECOR.