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Sarah Jessica Parker is not entirely sure when she became an acronym, an SJP. Watching her reconcile it, one might as well have called her ET, an LBD, or the IRS. "I just don't have any real sense of my public persona," she says with a what-are-ya-gonna-do shrug. "I don't know what people think of me, if they think of me at all."

SEE LOOKBOOK: SARAH JESSICA PARKER

Ah, but they do. The SJP is a mythical creature created in the mind's eye of every girl who has ever watched SATC (Sex and the City, of course). She's the glamorous everywoman who can skip around cobblestone streets in Manolos, wearing something highly impractical, and yet still brim, endlessly, with possibility. She's someone who, if we had a bigger shoe budget, we all think we could be.

On an arctic winter day in New York, Sarah Jessica comes racing into Morandi, a fashion-Italian bistro in her West Village neighborhood, padded up in a parka and Ugg boots. "Oh, I should have dressed up for you, but the weather wouldn't allow it," she says, nodding at her ensemble of blue jeans, brown henley, and scarf as well as a chunky knit hat from her label, Bitten. Even when the skies are dark and dreary, Sarah Jessica is an optimist. "But," she inquires in her singsong voice, "don't you just love this city?"

When Sarah Jessica asks if you love this city, you kind of have to. She is New York's Tinker Bell. After all, it was her voice that helped navigate the streets of Manhattan for millions of women for whom the city is still Neverland. The voice that articulated the questions so many of us were asking (whether or not it was cool to admit it).

It is fascinating, the fantasy that swirls around Sarah Jessica Parker. Few can resist its pull. Exhibit A: the scene in the MTV documentary on Britney Spears in which Britney is trying on a mini sweaterdress. She and her assistant agree that said outfit is very SJP. "[But] you're Britney Spears," the assistant says. "You're not Sarah Jessica Parker."

"I can be her for a day," Britney replies.

"I heard about that," Sarah Jessica says, clearly still computing. "God bless her. She can be whoever she wants to be for a day. We all can!"

But it's that very fantasy that Sarah Jessica, 42, has capitalized on in her very of-the-people way. She has parlayed her SATC fame into, among other things, a fragrance line with Coty — Lovely, Covet, and the new trio of Dawn, Endless, and Twilight — plus Bitten, her low-priced clothing line. And then there is the SATC movie, which grossed more than $400 million globally.

"I'm very flattered by the connection with women," she continues. "It doesn't mean that I always want to have a picture taken at inopportune times with people on the street who stop me, but almost everything I do outside of work, I want to do it for them. They are first and foremost in my mind."

And often, the first thing on her street. The Sex and the City bus tour chugs daily around the West Village, depositing queues of boa-wearing women outside Magnolia Bakery. "Ah, yes, I run into it," Sarah Jessica says. "There are times when it's totally terrific, and there are times when I'm like, Oh, God, I'd better run in the other direction. Especially when I'm with my son." (He is six-year-old James Wilkie, her son with husband Matthew Broderick.)

Talk turns briefly to the closest thing TV currently has to SATC, Gossip Girl. Sarah Jessica, whose retro-tinged vocabulary ("vulgar," "not infrequently," "golly!") is matched by a charming primness, asks, "Are the characters sexually active on that show?" Nod yes, and she looks shocked. "I hear it's pretty sophisticated, the content. Is there any concern over the impression that it's making on young women? I'm not asking in condemnation, but I'm just curious..."

But it's all women, not Upper East Siders, that Sarah Jessica thought of while developing her line of scents with Coty. She's been a fragrance obsessive for years. "I started keeping a list of names, and Lovely was first on the list. It just really describes what I wanted the fragrance to be." Covet was also on that list, which Sarah Jessica loves for "its lack of social graces." Has she ever been spritzed with her own fragrance? "I would be perfectly fine with that, as long as they didn't editorialize with 'This is the worst! I have to do this all day long, and I'm going to kill myself and I have a headache.'" She bursts out laughing. "That would be upsetting."

For the record, Sarah Jessica spritzes herself "at least three times a day." Scent memory is precious to her. "I remember when I came home from the hospital after having my son, I wore a Narciso Rodriguez black coat. Then, I was using this fragrance that I had created. I walk by that coat, and it still smells like that fragrance. It takes you right there."

For this story, SJP paid homage to another famous acronym, DV, the legendary Diana Vreeland (signature scent: Chanel No. 5). Vreeland, who served as the fashion editor of Bazaar from 1936 to 1962, was given to distinctive pronouncements, many of which were published in her "Why Don't You...?" column. On these pages, Sarah Jessica infuses classic DV portraits with a very SJP sensibility. "I wanted a modern, current feeling, to not make it too rarefied," she explains.

If Vreeland were alive today, "I don't think she would want to meet me," Sarah Jessica maintains in all seriousness. "But I would probably be completely taken with her. I mean, just the names of her children — who would've ever thought of that? Timmy, Frecky, and I can't remember the rest. I would find her awe-inspiring. She would be a great curiosity, amazing just to look at, to watch, to stare at." DV, like SJP, was fond of the word vulgar. "Yes," she says, giggling. "We might connect over that, over people's vulgarity, and how much we see it. It's a very good word, vulgar."

Read off some of Vreeland's "Why Don't You"s — "Why don't you... rinse your blond child's hair in dead champagne?" — and Sarah Jessica replies, "That kind of decadence is foreign to me; it's just such of another time. Especially in these times. It's just so crazy." So while DV was not exactly of the people, "she really created a completely different way of thinking about aesthetics, living, and indulgence," she says earnestly, "and the feeling of fashion."

The feeling of fashion is something Sarah Jessica understands implicitly. "I don't have the Carrie Bradshaw passion and devotion to it, but I would much prefer that life would allow for a beautiful shoe all day long." She'll readily acknowledge the transcendent power of a dress. "To stand in Mr. de la Renta's atelier and have him build a dress on you, that is amazing. And honestly, it's a great honor to be able to borrow something that weighs 40 pounds and requires three people to help you walk." How do you wear something that weighs 40 pounds? "Oh," she replies, "you just do."

Carrie Bradshaw took Sarah Jessica's style into another solar system. "I got to wear such incredible things, and you make such mistakes and there's such hits and great triumphs and there's incredible wrong, wrong, wrong." She scrunches her face. "But it's so much fun." Offscreen, the green feathered Philip Treacy hat she wore to the London premiere of SATC? "The hat heard round the world," she sighs. The so-fashion-it-hurts Balmain dress she wore to the New York City Ballet last fall? "That dress was really good. I love what [designer Christophe Decarnin] is doing. It's kind of '80s, but it's superfitted and tailored. I can't wear all that stuff, I'm too old, but with the jacket shoulder he did...he's kind of the male version of L'Wren Scott right now."

Another designer crush Sarah Jessica has — in perpetuity — is Alexander McQueen. She wore a slim black McQueen sheath, printed with a thin plume of cigarette smoke, to an SATC event in New York. "He's incredible. I actually had to cut myself out of that dress that night. My husband was out of town, so I was alone when I got home, and I couldn't unzip it. So," she says, wincing, "I got out the scissors."

Lest anyone think that these frocks all reside smugly in a fashion Batcave, think again. "Friends are readily disappointed by the size of my closet. And I thought it was big!" Her current favorite things are a Chanel patchwork handbag and a pair of Maison Martin Margiela boots that she's had for years. What can't she live without? "My son! My husband! Food! Oh, fashion? I don't know. A good bra?"

As for the men in the house, she dresses "the little one, not the big one. Matthew has a nice eye. He's the last person I know who still wears a tie." If she were to renew her wedding vows with Broderick, Sarah Jessica, who famously wore black on her wedding day, would choose white. "I'm not kidding. White it up. I'd wear a beautiful, proper wedding dress, like I should have worn on the day. James Wilkie's teacher is getting married, and he said, 'Do you think she will be wearing black?' I said, 'No! I can almost assure you.' Then he said, 'Do you still regret it?' and I said, 'Yes, I still regret it.'"

James, who used to hate it when Mom got dressed up because that meant she was leaving the house, has reconciled himself to the occasional glamour situation. "Now, if I would dress up in Legos," Sarah Jessica explains, "he would be very interested."

Maybe Carrie Bradshaw would have worn a Lego skirt, but in these recessionary times, what would our heroine do? "She would probably end up in a hospital," Sarah Jessica says with a laugh. "Perhaps she would go back to her '80s stuff and start bringing it back out." She characterizes the recession as "very scary. I know so many people who have lost jobs, are losing jobs, husbands who have lost jobs. I can't imagine going shopping."

Sarah Jessica has always had her "head screwed on." She doesn't obsess about aging, either. "It's a real crucible because you feel daunted by your peers who somehow get younger and younger. People older than me have fewer lines than I do. And no, you're not supposed to talk about it; you're supposed to admire the fact that they look 22 even though they're 58."

It's hard to believe, when one is sitting with SJP, that she has been acting for 35 years. It has earned her whimsy and wisdom in equal measure. "I can't imagine being 22 today and being thrust into public life," she observes. "I wouldn't have ended up off the rails, but I wouldn't have been able to handle it the way that I'm able to today."

So if Sarah Jessica were to pen a "Why Don't You...?" on surviving modern celebrity, it would start thus: "Don't surround yourself with bodyguards and SUVs, and return everything you are loaned in the shape in which you received it — unless you have to cut yourself out of it! Return jewelry, return bags, clean out the bags! I would say, Try to be kind. I know what it's like to get up the courage to approach somebody, to tell them how much you admire them." She plops on her hat and smiles. "Why don't you... be decent?"

WHY DON'T YOU…?

SARAH JESSICA PARKER shares her tips for a chic and gracious life.

• Try, for every 20 e-mails you send, to write a letter, an old-fashioned letter, and post it. Remember how it felt to receive an actual letter or postcard in the mail?

• Keep a bucket filled with candy. Cheap, good candy. From butterscotch hard candies to Bulls-Eyes to spice drops. Pretty cheap per pound, low calorie, and great late at night while working or staying up too late reading or watching television. It will scratch the itch.

• Use your local library. So few people do anymore. And if you are a parent, introduce your children to their neighborhood library. It will give them a real sense of independence to have their own library card and enjoy borrowing books.

• Empty out your purse twice a week, tossing all coins into a mason jar, an old coffee can, or a strange-shaped and not particularly practical porcelain jar. It's wonderfully surprising to discover what can accumulate. You can give the money to charity (always feels good), and it's grand to do in the spring when charities are not on people's minds.

• Cook or bake something outrageous that you are convinced will be impossible. The advantage of this endeavor is that it can actually get you cooking more meals at home. Once you are triumphant with the absurdly difficult, a meal for yourself or your family will seem like a cakewalk (so to say). And it can be a great money saver.

• Walk more. It simply feels great. And for those who have an "allergy" to working out, it's a great way to get the blood moving. If you are feeling extra adventurous, try putting some speed into that walk.

• Read the editorial page of your local paper. It introduces you to opinion and can be terrifically provocative and perhaps a great motivating force for you to get involved in your community, regardless of your political ideology.

• Get eight hours of sleep, though I never do.

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