How to irritate Sarah Jessica Parker in 5 seconds or less

BY GENE TRIPLETT

NEW YORK — Never send a boy to do a fashion editor’s job.

That was the hard lesson learned at a recent press junket for “Sex and the City 2.” When my boss heard I was New York-bound to preview the glittery chick-flick and interview its stars — Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis — she instructed me to bring back fashion quotes from each of the four actresses.

Now, I feel qualified to review any movie, no matter what audience it’s targeting, and ask intelligent questions about character, performance, artistic intent, etc.

But when it comes to women’s fashions, I don’t know Rene Caovilla from Reeboks.

Consequently, I’m not equipped to make informed inquiries about designer duds for the distaff side of the human family, and wouldn’t feel comfortable trying.

Alas, my orders were clear. But since the Q&A with these glamour gals was to be in a press conference setting with dozens of other journalists from all over the U.S. and Canada, some fashion-conscious scribe was bound to ask the crucial question for me.

After all, this fluffy film’s tagline is “the fun, the friendship, the fashion,” and the conference was being held in the rarefied surroundings of Bergdorf Goodman’s shoe department. The question had to occur to someone, and it usually does at these things when the interview subjects are expensively wrapped female stars.

But when an entertainment boy is on a fashion editor’s mission, anything that can go wrong, WILL.

First, the stars breezed into the room — fashionably late by 20 minutes — and took their chairs all in a pretty row.

Then a lot of time was spent with pesky, pertinent questions about story arc, each character’s “journey” and “issues,” problems with location shooting in Morocco, and so forth.

The clock was ticking. Everyone had to vacate this ultra-upscale establishment before its Sunday noon opening time which was now fast approaching, and STILL no one had asked The Question.

Desperately, now willing to humiliate myself, I stuck my hand in the air, hoping the moderator would pass the microphone before the time for questions ran out. But there were too many reporters in the room and not everyone got a turn at the mike.

When the moderator called “last question,” she picked someone behind me and my heart sank.

But when the conference adjourned and the stars were still up there milling around and talking to one another, I made a last-ditch move, stepping up and calling, “Sarah!”

To my relief she turned and smiled, raising her brows quizzically. Here I was, face to face with a radiant Sarah Jessica Parker aka Carrie Bradshaw, bubbly but wise fashionista and autobiographical romance columnist in the fabulously successful “Sex and the City” TV and movie series.