Manhattan transfer: Stylist Patricia Field's new range of clothes

Until now, the Sex and The City character that M&S most closely resembled was Miranda: practical and reliable, but not exactly daring. But for its first major designer collaboration, with the TV show's stylist Patricia Field, the British institution has come over more Samantha and Carrie. Think sequinned jumpsuits and tiny, clingy mini-dresses.

With her penchant for kitsch, ultra-sexy clothes, Field might not seem the obvious choice for M&S. Yet, when I meet her in The Hotel Edison in New York, hours before she unveils the range on the catwalk, she dismisses the notion. "My look has been proven on worldwide television, and M&S is a worldwide retailer so I think it's a perfect fit," she says, firmly. Seated next to Field is Kate Bostock, M&S's executive head of clothing, clad in a red dress from the new range. "I know our customers extremely well and I know how passionate they are about the kind of stuff that Patricia has done," Bostock says.

Field's neon-lit shop in the Bowery area of Manhattan might be a temple to kitsch'n'bling, with its handcuffs, Spandex dresses, huge diamante name necklaces, multicoloured wigs and edible knickers, but all that is only one aspect of her image. As her styling work shows, she is versatile. Field, 66, was nominated for an Oscar for her costume design on The Devil Wears Prada, in which Anne Hathaway's dowdy PA was transformed into a shiny-haired, Calvin Klein-clad fashion bunny. She can also do frumpy – albeit, as the stylist for Ugly Betty , an engaging, screen version of frumpy – and new projects include the US version of the hit Australian comedy Kath & Kim.

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It was Field who approached M&S about the range, which has been termed Destination Style New York, and when it was announced she was quoted as saying that she "really wanted to get involved with a brand who really understood women of all ages". When I ask her about this, however, she retorts abruptly: "I never said that." Behind the cartoon glamour of her appearance – today she is wearing a strapless navy Lurex dress, and has ketchup-coloured hair in Jessica Rabbit waves – Field clearly has a fierce side that, along with her talent for expressing character through clothing, must have helped her become one of the world's most influential stylists.

Born and raised in New York by Greek and Armenian parents, Field began her retail career when she opened her eponymous Greenwich Village boutique in 1966. But it was the launch of Sex and the City in 1998 that made her name, and caught the imagination of fashion designers and clothes lovers alike. Soon, brands were clamouring to be featured and Field was seated in the front row of the fashion shows. Eclecticism and exaggeration were the hallmarks of her look, for which Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, was the strongest showcase. Field would put Parker in deliberately mismatched items, such as dresses over trousers and masculine tailoring with ultra-feminine vintage pieces, and sparked multiple trends. Gold name necklaces, giant corsages and prom dresses were all widely copied, and the show made household names of labels such as Manolo Blahnik and Fendi.

Why does Field think the show was so successful? "I never really thought about whether Sex and the City changed the way women dress until people kept telling me it did. It isn't part of my consciousness to be part of some cultural, social, fashion campaign. But I think people got into stepping out and dressing up a bit more, not copying the way men dress to go to the office or not being caught up in the head-to-toe look of a designer, but mixing it all up a bit."

But while for most viewers the programme was an unfettered celebration of female solidarity and the pure joy of fashion, for others it fuelled "It Bag" mania and portrayed the characters as being obsessed with trivialities and brand names – expensive ones, at that. Field responds: "I don't have any social intentions. I am just creating stories, having fun and dressing Barbie dolls." (Field has a Barbie-themed range on her website.) "When I get a script, I don't criticise it from a philosophical point of view or get into it that deeply. I just enjoy the experience and what comes out, comes out. I'm in the business of entertainment."

She clearly isn't entirely resistant to the idea of fashion as a vehicle for political statement, however – her shop sells T-shirts in support of Barack Obama. A colleague suggested the idea, so she went out and dreamt up the slogan: Elegance, dignity, Obama, statesman. "I'm sorry for all those hunter-gatherers out there," she drawls dryly in a clear dig at moose-shooting Governor Sarah Palin, who had just been announced as John McCain's running mate when we met. Field once said she wanted to restyle Hillary Clinton, but no more. "Guess what? I've lost interest!" she guffaws.

The odd spiky response aside, Field clearly has a strong sense of fun, which is evident in the way she dances and whoops in her seat during the M&S catwalk show, surrounded by friends and drag queens from the New York club scene. Her party-loving demeanour also comes across in her collection for M&S: it's colourful, sexy and guided by a late-Seventies and Eighties disco aesthetic. "I don't think I've toned down my look for the store," says Field, "it was an amalgamation of my best experiences over the past 10 years or so, whether it be the TV shows, the movies or my own collections. My clothes will always be powerful, and you know, they tend to be sexy."

Several of the pieces are raunchy enough to raise a few eyebrows in less cosmopolitan branches of Marks & Sparks, and there is also Field's trademark love of strong, sometimes clashing colours in the form of a red-and-pink spotty halterneck dress in velvet and an aqua angel-sleeved frock. "Some colours looks good with my hair, such as my turquoise glasses," says Field. "My car has to be a colour that goes well with my hair, because when I'm sitting in it my hair has to look cool, so my car is a sort of an awkward turquoise. I also have turquoise glasses so when I sit in my car with my hair and my glasses it all looks good together."

There is a fleeting moment of concern about whether "that sounds vacuous" before she adds, triumphantly, and ever the ambitious stylist: "The one-shoulder dress in my M&S collection would look really great teamed with a red convertible."