There is a certain kind of woman who treats getting dressed on vacation the same way she treats everything else in life: with absolute intention. Carrie Bradshaw was that woman on screen. Bella Hadid is that woman in real life. And in recent seasons, the line between the two has become almost impossible to draw.
Whether she is stepping off a ski slope in Aspen, lingering on a sun-drenched European terrace, or arriving at a beachside dinner with effortless poise, Hadid's off-duty wardrobe reads like a living archive of everything that made celebrity style worth obsessing over in the first place. The archival designers. The statement bags. The unapologetic theatrics of looking good simply because she can.
What Is Bella Hadid's Vacation Style Aesthetic?
Hadid's approach to dressing away from home is not about packing light. It is about packing right. Her vacation wardrobe spans corset tops and low-rise leather trousers in Aspen, romantic ruffled lace in New York's summer heat, and '90s archival Versace gowns along the Cannes waterfront. The throughline is always vintage fashion, sourced meticulously and worn with the ease of someone who has never once reached for something just because it was new.
Working closely with her stylist Mimi Cuttrell, Hadid pulls pieces from specialist houses like Raffe Vintage, No Standing NYC, and Loved by Chi. On a single trip to Milan, she stepped out in a cream suit from Gianni Versace's Spring/Summer 1995 collection in the afternoon and a John Galliano-era Christian Dior gown from 1998 by evening. For a fragrance launch. On a Tuesday.
Vogue has documented how Hadid approaches vintage fashion on vacation with particular creativity. Rather than copying an archival runway look wholesale, she combines pieces from different collections into entirely new outfits, a detail explored in depth at Vogue's coverage of her vintage Prada vacation dressing. Her Spring 2002 Prada set, for instance, saw her mix a sleeveless tank from one runway look with wide-leg trousers from another, accessorized with brown pointy pumps and a Western-inflected belt. The pieces were 23 years old. The result looked like the freshest thing on the street.
How Does the Carrie Bradshaw Connection Show Up On Vacation?
The most talked-about parallel between Hadid and the fictional "Sex and the City" columnist is the Fendi Baguette. Carrie Bradshaw made the bag a pop culture artifact when she refused to hand it over during a mugging in Season 3, insisting, "It's not a bag, it's a Baguette." That scene turned a handbag into a shorthand for a whole philosophy of dressing. Fendi has since produced over 700 variations of the original design.
Hadid keeps reaching for it. At the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, she slung a leopard print Fendi Mama Baguette over her cowgirl-ready outfit, a larger, animal-print descendant of Carrie's original, and the fashion internet noticed immediately. In Aspen, the same cheetah print version appeared over a cropped corset top, black leather flare trousers, and a Valentino shearling coat. As W Magazine put it, the bag made Carrie Bradshaw look like she'd been out-styled by someone vacationing in the mountains.
The Baguette is not the only overlap. Both women gravitate toward capri pants styled with going-out tops and vintage accessories. Both layer corsets under or over outerwear. Both treat animal print less as a trend and more as a permanent wardrobe category. The difference is that Bradshaw existed in a writer's imagination and a costume department's budget. Hadid exists on streets, ski slopes, and red carpets, proving the same sensibility holds up outside the frame.
Why Does Bella Hadid's 'Vintage-First' Approach Resonate So Widely?
Celebrity style has always functioned as a form of cultural shorthand. When a public figure consistently reaches for archival pieces over new season drops, it signals something beyond aesthetics. It suggests a relationship with clothing that prioritizes meaning over marketing, rarity over relevance, and craft over convenience.
Hadid's deep commitment to vintage fashion lands at a moment when younger audiences are rediscovering '90s and Y2K aesthetics through "Sex and the City" reruns and resale platforms. The demand for Fendi Baguettes, low-rise silhouettes, and archival Versace on sites like Vestiaire Collective and The RealReal spikes noticeably in the days after a Hadid sighting. That kind of influence is not manufactured. It is the result of a genuinely consistent point of view, expressed on a very public stage.
At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Hadid wore a Schiaparelli creation that recalled a vintage crochet dress associated with Jane Birkin, a look that immediately circulated across social media and reignited conversation about fashion's relationship with its own history. The resurgence of vintage in celebrity dressing, as observers noted, reflects both a hunger for individual expression and a broader shift toward pieces with provenance and story.
Why Bella Hadid's Vacation Wardrobe Is the Carrie Bradshaw Blueprint, Rebuilt
What Carrie Bradshaw represented on screen was the idea that getting dressed could be a form of autobiography. Every outfit told you something about where she had been, what she valued, and who she was performing for, mostly herself. That spirit is exactly what Hadid brings to vacation dressing, except it is not fiction.
The vintage Alaïa knit at Cannes, the Fendi bag at the rodeo, the archival Prada set mixed from two separate runway moments, the shearling coat and leather trousers in a snowy mountain town. None of it is accidental. Hadid's celebrity style on vacation is the product of the same thing that made Carrie Bradshaw a fashion icon: the belief that clothes are never just clothes, and that wherever you are going, you might as well dress like it matters.
In that sense, Hadid is not channeling Carrie Bradshaw so much as she is carrying the same torch forward, one archival piece at a time.
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