As a GenXer, let's talk about the contents of Carrie's medicine cabinet on AJLT

I have ADHD, I went on a deeep dive. Join me!

I know I am not the only one hate-watching AJLT. Heck, even my husband hate watches with me so we can rant about the inconsistencies (like we’re to believe LTW was describing her step-father’s death in Season 1) and how the writers room must be filled with Gen Z people with distant relationships with their parents because they have no effing clue how people our age act, shop, date, have sex, text, eat, or fill our medicine cabinets.

Carrie Bradshaw has never been one to prioritize beauty products. Occasionally, she’d get a cut or go straight, but in general, she left her beachy wavy curls to their own devices. Unlike her friends Samantha and Charlotte, she never got into cosmetic procedures or spa days. Excluding Season 5, when Carrie worked at Vogue and lived in Paris, and after she and Aidan broke up in Season 4 and she did the breakup bob, her beauty routine became simpler as she got older.

In the three seasons of AJLT, Carrie’s makeup has been quite minimal. Occasionally, a smoky eye or a YLBB glossy lip, but nothing fancy. And AJLT Carrie is still not one into professional skin treatments, injectables, or even the sun concern most fashionable Gen Xers have these days.

That being said, Carrie still reads Vogue cover to cover. She lunches with friends who care very much about their skin. She shops in person. And as someone who is in the fashion realm, there’s a good chance she has been offered free products and procedures just for being Carrie Bradshaw.

Carrie’s medicine cabinet contents kinda make sense, and some of it makes absolutely no sense. And the nonsensical pieces feel like blatant product placement, a random add to fill space, and/or a youngin’s thought of what “an old” would have in their medicine cabinet.

I went on a hunt to see if anyone had broken down what was in Carrie’s medicine cabinet. There’s some ranting in the AJLT subreddit, and Shop Your TV linked to a few items. The site that did the best job was Vogue Arabia (cross-posted to Vogue UK), which I think got into the nitty gritty but only linked to what was linkable via affiliate. I took photos of the episode so I could conduct further research and determine precisely what is in the character’s medicine cabinet, separating the ridiculous from the sensible.

Carrie is always in tune with what’s happening in fashion and street style, but as someone who let her bra straps show before it was cool, she isn’t one to jump onto every trend or worry too much about what the masses are doing to be “correct” or “stylish.” And that includes skincare. This is why I think these things in Carrie’s medicine cabinet and bathroom make sense:

• There was a jar of Ponds cold cream in her medicine cabinet, and I think that makes sense. Carrie has been using Ponds since college to remove her kohl liner and if it ain’t broke, why fix it. Grown-woman Carrie has switched to the fragrance-free version (the green cap) as she wants to have control over how she smells when she heads to bed.

• Carrie has a tube of L’Occitane hand cream in a tarnished silver cup, and I, too, think this makes sense. L’Occitane’s hand cream is a classic and one she could have easily been using for decades.

• The same applies to a tube of Aquaphor, which she tossed at the beginning of the episode and then, I believe, used as hand cream (inconsistencies, but the product makes sense).

• The same goes for Deborah Lippmann nail products. We grown women may remember how Deborah Lippmann was THE name in nails in the late 90s and early 00s. SJP was such a fan of Deborah Lippmann that she asked the SATC team to put her products in Carrie’s bathroom. (source) And Carrie is an ain’t broke don’t fix kind of gal, so she would continue to use Deborah Lippmann nail products. “Prelude to a Kiss” was the color Carrie wore on SATC, and it is not discontinued; “Peachy Keen” is the color in her AJLT cabinet, which feels like a reasonable replacement.

• French pharmacy skincare has been considered cool for decades. TikTokers may feel that they've somehow invented it, but I recall that as early as college in the 90s, it was a must to stock up at a French pharmacy when visiting Paris. Magazines like Vogue would drop names of French pharmacy products, like we all knew what Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse or La Roche Posay Cicaplast was, but of course. In Carrie’s cabinet and on the sink there is E45 foaming face cleanser and several La Roche Posay products inside the cabinet.

• That white jar on the bottom shelf with the black cap is Mandom Tancho Tique Hair Styling Natural Wax Stick. It’s a Japanese product, and it appears to be old packaging (the lid has the Tancho on it, maybe the lid is backwards in her cabinet). I could see Carrie buying this many years ago at a Ricky’s and still keeping it for when she does her chignons and slick-backs. I thought this was a pretty interesting addition, and I wonder if it’s leftover from the SATC days.

• Sleep gummies. If she has TUMS, it’s no surprise she’s also popping SUKU Vitamins Restful Sleep Gummies. Made with melatonin, L-theanine and GABA, sounds like something a fellow menopausal friend would recommend over brunch. In fact, I am surprised I don’t see more menopausal-esque products in here.

• Q-tips, Band-Aids, bobby pins, and an old powder compact. Thank you for the dose of reality. I also found the unused face sponges extremely realistic!

• Bar soap. Carrie would have bar soap, she would use it like I use it - for parts of the body, for handwashing intimates, for getting out stains, for scrubbing under nails, and sometimes for washing hands when the moisturizing stuff doesn’t feel good enough. It’s a rectangular bar, so I could see it being Ivory or à la Maison.

What wasn’t in the cabinet that I expected to see:

• Original German Nivea Creme in the metal tin. It would be beat up, the lid not on quite right, and possibly expired, but held onto because it’s so hard to find these days (the US version just isn’t the same).

• DHC Deep Cleansing Oil. This was popular at the same time as the French pharmacy stuff, and especially with oil cleansing so popular right now, I expected this. That being said, E45 foaming cleanser (on the sink next to the hand wash) isn’t that unusual for her skin, and maybe she’s been using it since she lived in Paris. It isn’t readily available in the US, so again, I could see her having a second gentle moisturizing face cleanser as backup.

• Caudelie Vinoperfect. She may not be big into skincare and beauty, but that’s why she may have some sun spots now that she’s older that she may have bought something to treat and of course it would be a familiar French brand.

• Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse. Carrie loves some glowing skin, and this is a French pharmacy classic. That being said, she does have a big tube of Deborah Lippmann “Rich Girl” in there, which may be something she has rocked since the 90s.

• Along with the L’Occitane hand cream, I also think the silver cup would be a metal or crystal nail file, possibly a random beauty tool like a brow brush, a Tinkle razor (she is the age of random-ass face hairs even with laser hair removal), and maybe a lash or brow growth serum.

• Self-tanner. Or at least some bronzing drops. AJLT Carrie is far more tan than early SATC Carrie. I don’t blame her, I think it looks great. I love a tan on myself too. But Carrie isn’t lying out on the roof of Gramercy, and she isn’t going for a weekly spray tan. Maybe there’s a bottle of Jergen’s Natural Glow in the shower? I still feel there would be some bronzing drops to add to her face cream.

What I feel Carrie would NOT use:

• Neutrogena. Neutrogena is an OG skincare product and good stuff, but it’s the kind of brand that if you didn’t use it in your 20s you surely won’t use it in your 50s. It’s not a cult classic like Ponds cold cream, and the products in the cabinet are newer concepts (hello water gel… would Carrie even know what that is?). And what was up with her, at night, grabbing the tube of SPF and looking at the front and back like she never saw it before? With so much Neutrogena front and center, it feels like product placement (AKA, they got paid to put so much Neutrogena out there).

• La Roche Posay Thermal Water. That’s not a simple product; I could see Carrie having an old bottle of it in the corner that she bought but never continued using, but I don’t see such a product front and center. I also think it would be Avène, which was popular in the 90s and 00s. This makes me feel that maybe La Roche was also product placement, and not just GenX French pharmacy love.

• There is a brown bottle next to the facial sponges that I believe is from Apothecare Essentials, but it appears to be the old packaging from 2019. Look at this picture on Instagram, the bottle top center, I think it’s the same. The stuff they sell now at Target isn’t the same design. If by chance Carrie did have this years-old SPF product in her medicine cabinet, it wouldn’t be front and center.

• So much sunscreen. Yes, sunscreen is important, and yes, it should be worn every day, even when it’s cloudy, and it should be reapplied, and it should be on the whole body, not just the face. But Carrie is more the type to prevent sunburn than to prevent sun damage. Why would whole body spray sunscreen be in there if body lotion is not? There are at least four sunscreen products in there, and one is likely from 2019. And if Carrie really was into sunscreen, don’t you think she’d go French and not a Neutrogena aerosol?

What I didn’t think made sense until I researched was the Dove hand wash. This is the original “caring hand wash,” which is no longer available. Dove has gone fancy with a range of foaming and advanced care and antibacterial hand soaps and this product is not on its site. It doesn’t sell on Target or Walmart and I could only find the big refill bag on Amazon. Which makes me think this is an old-ass bottle of hand soap and she uses the bar more often.

This feels very Carrie. And likely Carrie hired someone to pack and move on her behalf which means they would pack up the old-ass hand soap and the expired SPF and all the other random stuff we’re seeing.

But then of course, this is a TV show and Carrie is not a human. It’s hard not to work to understand this character, it has been in our lives longer than many of our marriages and friendships. But maybe, that Dove hand soap is there because the glass bottle of fancy-dancy stuff broke five minutes before shooting and they just filled the space with what was sitting in the studio kitchen.

Thank you for joining me on this deep dive. It was a wonderful distraction from the actual work I needed to complete today!