‘And Just Like That …’ Style Recap: The Case of the Missing Birkin

This article contains spoilers for Episode 3 of the second season of “And Just Like That …”

In the third episode of “And Just Like That …,” the show seems to reach back to its “Sex and the City” past and pull out previously featured handbags and nostalgia for a bygone New York.

Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is recording her memoir and managing difficult memories of her deceased husband, John, by shopping and faking Covid. Seema (Sarita Choudhury) has her Birkin bag stolen in front of her apartment, and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), who is still in Los Angeles, is feeling so transformed that she decides to get a tattoo.

Ahead of the third episode, reporters and editors on the Styles desk discussed some of the most memorable accessories and thematic throwbacks in the latest installment of the series.

Vanessa Friedman I think we have to talk about stolen handbag déjà vu. When Seema’s Birkin was taken, it sent me right down the rabbit hole to “Sex and the City,” Season 3, when Carrie’s Fendi Baguette was snatched — and then a very similar Baguette reappeared in this episode.

Jeremy Allen Once again, purse as plot point!

Madison Malone Kircher That Baguette popped up in Season 1, too!

VF Handbags are the Proustian madeleines of this show.

Louis Lucero II A yearning for the days of Giuliani’s New York? It seemed to be where this episode took place. And I don’t know what’s more implausible to me: the idea that a mugger in 2023 wouldn’t recognize a Birkin bag or that thousands of pedestrians over the course of two days wouldn’t.

VF Good point, Louis. How was that actually quite large Birkin just lying under shrubbery?

JA I was also struck by how Covid really became a plot point for the first time in this series — especially sartorially. Carrie, of course, puts her own twist on pandemic-era athleisure. In the first episode, she pairs an oversize New York Times sweatshirt with, well, nothing, and in this one, she wears a Monopoly sweatshirt with a semi-sheer tiered skirt, Barbiecore kitten heels and an Oy Vey mask for her faux bout with the virus.

Callie Holtermann I caught myself laughing a couple of times during this episode — sometimes with the characters and other times at them. Carrie faking Covid to get out of her obligations was funny. So was Seema’s Louis Vuitton logo-print mask.

MMK I will come clean and say the final line made me laugh: “And just like that … I got Covid.”

VF I will also come clean and say I derived a certain amount of satisfaction when it turned out my prediction of more Loewe during our last chat actually came true, with the balloon heels in Carrie’s Bergdorf Goodman shoe shopping spree.

CH Vanessa, I was about to congratulate you for this. The balloon shoes were one of the episode’s bids for relevance that actually did work for me. Those shoes are crazy, they’re everywhere — and I can totally see Carrie buying them and wearing them to, like, a farm in the Hudson Valley.

JA An issue that “And Just Like That …” seems to be constantly negotiating is having one designer-clad foot squarely in the past and the other tepidly in the present. It’s clear the straddling can sometimes be uncomfortable for the writers — but also, perhaps, for us.

Katie Van Syckle What tattoo did you think Miranda would end up with? I was expecting a robot.

MMK I don’t know what I thought she would pick, but I certainly didn’t think Miranda “The Brainy One” Hobbes was going to opt for tattooing her own initials on her wrist.

KVS With serifs!

LL Let’s briefly venture into the speculative: What else might M.H. have stood for?

CH Max HBO.

LL Mondays? Harrumph!

KVS Mayor Hobbs.

MMK Anybody want to predict what we’re going to see next episode? Sartorially or otherwise? Vanessa, you’re already on the board with Loewe.

JA Miranda in jumpsuits for $1,000? Seema in zebra stripes? Lisa Todd Wexley in baubles that wouldn’t make it past the T.S.A.?

CH Lily, Charlotte’s newly rebellious daughter, gets a septum piercing.

VF Definitely Seema in more animal print. I think odds are high for a Chanel bag or two. More LV.

KVS More New York City merch and wearable New York pride.

LL Mark my words: We’ll see Carrie in Rachel Comey’s New York Review of Books collection before midseason.

Vanessa Friedman, Louis Lucero II, Katie Van Syckle, Jeremy Allen, Madison Malone Kircher and Callie Holtermann contributed reporting.