Candace Bushnell

At around 1 o'clock Thursday morning, Morgan Entrekin decided it was time to extract himself from the dance floor at Socialista and head home. "I'm having an excellent time!" he said, half empty beer in hand. "I wish I were 20 years younger! I could dance all night."

The reason he couldn't: "I have a 3-year-old! I'm tired, man. I'm old."

Mr. Entrekin used to party. Hasn't in a while. Mostly focused now on running his publishing house, Grove/Atlantic, and hanging with the wife and their little boy.

He seems genuinely fulfilled, a fact he was forced to forget last night when his colleagues in the publishing industry turned to him to reinvigorate the annual dinner known as the National Book Awards and make it fun again.  read more »

Do financial reporters care what the candidates think, wonders Felix Gillette. "Few in the world of financial reporting found much to say about either Mr. McCain or Senator Barack Obama’s responses to the unfolding crisis that week. After all, should business reporters really care more about Mr. McCain’s 'commission of technicians' than, say, Henry Paulson’s plans for the largest bailout in American history or, say, the sudden, radical end of the pure investment banks on Wall Street?"

John Koblin tracks how women's magazines will be dealing with Sarah Palin. "Ladies Home Journal said it will absolutely cover Mrs. Palin—well, absolutely if she wins."

Leon Neyfakh asks, "Is it time yet to start pulling together books about last week’s catastrophe on Wall Street?" Apparently! "Publishers are uneasy about making plans too soon, but the city’s finest financial journalists—and their literary agents—are eager to get moving."

Plus: Simon Doonan Gets Married... Clay Felker's Memorial... Candace Bushnell's Latest.  read more »

The Observer's Doree Shafrir reviews Candance Bushnell's new novel One Fifth Avenue. It's about love, lust, longing and one pricey co-op.

One Fifth Avenue
By Candace Bushnell
Hyperion, 433 pages, $25.95

When Candace Bushnell started writing her “Sex and the City” column in this newspaper in 1994, Rudy Giuliani was mayor, the average price of a Manhattan apartment was $450,000 and very few people had Internet access at home. To judge by her latest novel, One Fifth Avenue, it seems likely that Ms. Bushnell is nostalgic for at least two out of the three.

In real life, One Fifth Avenue is an imposing co-op building just north of Washington Square Park; its ground floor houses the Mario Batali restaurant Otto. By using the venerable address as the setting of this book, Ms.  read more »

So here's a question: Will there ever not be Sex and the City-themed public-relations extravaganzas in New York City?

Last night marked roughly four months since the release of the undead franchise Sex and the City: The Movie, which means it was time for the release of the DVD, and therefore time to stretch a pink carpet the length of a city block down which stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall—even Lynn Cohen, who plays Magda the maid--could march to the bloodcurdling screams of their obsessed fans.

Such was the scene last night outside of the New York Public Library to celebrate the fact that we can now go home and watch the movie over and over again.  read more »

There’s an episode of Sex and the City, about halfway through the first season, in which Carrie learns that Mr. Big used to be married. His ex is a publisher, and Carrie decides to check her out by scheduling an appointment with her under the pretense that she has a book to pitch. When she gets to this lady’s office, Carrie realizes that she only does children’s books, and finds herself having to improvise. After stammering for a second, she makes a half-hearted pitch for a book about a girl who has magic cigarettes that let her “go anywhere in the whole wide world, like Arabia or New Jersey.  read more »

Candace Bushnell is insisting that the use of designer labels in her writing is about women's identities, not dropping brand names. [Vogue UK]

"Not interested," said Christian Louboutin, when asked if he might ever expand into designing clothes. [Vogue UK]

After bringing success to her own brand of Jimmy Choo and helping revive Halston, Tamara Mellon has been named the director of Revlon cosmetics. [FWD]  read more »

Sex and the City has come full circle. Over the weekend, what began as a weekly column in The New York Observer in 1994 racked up $50 million on movie screens across the country, knocking Indiana Jones’ hat off his head.

When Candace Bushnell started the column 14 years ago, there was no telling that her doppelgänger, Carrie, together with Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, would end up recalibrating the lens through which the world viewed New York single life.  read more »

Before last night's big-screen Sex and the City premiere at Radio City Music Hall, a tented red carpet sheltered Katie Couric, Donna Karan, the Seinfelds, Donald and Melania Trump, Mary J. Blige, Gayle King, and original Sex writer Candace Bushnell from the muggy drizzle outside, which Carrie Bradshaw would have just run through in four-inch heels.

The celebrities posed for pictures with cardboard posters of Sarah Jessica Parker (despite the fact that the actress herself was giving interviews nearby in a floor-length gray gown). Inside, large groups of women in short cocktail dresses and heels did the same. The occasional man looked either shell-shocked or gay.

Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley arrived and took their seats. Then it was Jason Lewis, a.k.a. Smith Jerrod. By the time Chris Noth strolled down the aisle in a khaki suit, the audience could take it no longer: A loud cheer went up and the women leaped to their feet in a flurry of flashbulbs. Sarah Jessica Parker soon made her way down the aisle at Stage Left, eliciting even louder cheers. One could have been forgiven for thinking this was a very stylish, estrogen-infused rock concert.  read more »

Today's Page Six features an unusual phrase rarely seen in its home paper: "The Post regrets the error."

The normally biting gossip column regrets its report from March 25 that Cashmere Mafia creator Darren Star had "swiped" the premise for his ABC show from his former Sex and the City collaborator (and Observer alum) Candace Bushnell, who was developing her book Lipstick Jungle into a very similar show for NBC. (The March 25th item is cached here.) Today, the Post says:

WE reported on March 25 that TV producer Darren Star swiped the idea for "Cashmere Mafia" from Candace Bushnell, producer of "Lipstick Jungle." In fact, we were mistaken. Star was approached with the idea by ABC. The two shows were conceived independently.  read more »

Ladies, if you thought you could have it all, you can’t. You can come close—you can have an attractive partner, cute kids, cool job, decent apartment—but it’s not going to be everything put together like you thought. You’ll do the best you can at all these things, but in everyone else’s eyes, it will never be enough. Yes, it’s rough out there.

But…  read more »

Last Thursday, on a cold and blustery January afternoon, the cast and crew of Lipstick Jungle, the new NBC series premiering Feb. 7, scuttled about the Ukrainian Institute of America on 79th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Bright lights illuminated the high ceilings, ornate moldings and chandeliers within the 1898 mansion, which was standing in as a billionaire bachelor’s New York City apartment. Banks of additional lights outside the building created artificial sunlight streaming through the windows. The grand staircase was covered in plastic wrap.  read more »

The proprietors of the Old Town Bar & Restaurant are usually pretty accurate when it comes to advertising.

So the bar's brand-new 2008 calendar magnets gave us pause:

Did Carrie really meet Mr. Big at the Old Town?

Let's go to the tape--er, complete DVD set:  read more »

[Ed. note: this column was originally published on August 12th, 1996.]

The neighbors had sex last week. You know how it sounds, like cats being thrown into the sky. “Temptation hangs in the summer air,” The New York Times recently reported. Welcome to August.

I met my colleague Candace Bushnell by the Chanel accessories counter in Bergdorf Goodman at high noon the other day. Her Sex and the City columns have just been published in book form by Atlantic Monthly Press. Shopping is, after all, vertical sex.  read more »

Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress who is frequently confused soap-opera-fan-style with Carrie Bradshaw, the character she portrayed on HBO hit series Sex and the City, who was a writer and not a fashion designer anyway (and based on former Observer scribe Candace Bushnell, btw), has been rewarded for being the beneficiary of a fantastic wardrobe: she has her own fashion line!  read more »

“I was here a couple of days ago and they were all back there working like little elves,” former Observer columnist Candace Bushnell told the Transom on the runway at the Cynthia Rowley show at Gotham Hall. Seated nearby were All My Children’s Levin Rambin and eco-socialite Arden Wohl in an un-cinched flowing red dress and black flower headband--of course!

The crowd chomped away on Rowley-provided popcorn and water as the lights dimmed. Models sporting Hamptons-style flowing white and beige wide-leg tapered pants prowled down the runway against techno beats. The palette seemed very much inspired by the designer’s children’s toy room: pastel blue, pink and purple. After the final catwalk, models straddled vintage bikes and rode off the runway—this week’s Observer cover story come to life!