My Fashion Reality Show Education

This Stuff #161

Between 2005 and 2010, there was a boom in fashion that had little to do with clothes. Reality television took hold of the industry showing off the glamour, manufactured high stakes, and absurd drama. Former Laguna Beach star Lauren Conrad worked at Teen Vogue in the fashion closet in her Hills spin-off. Stylist Rachel Zoe had several seasons of a Bravo show where she showed off an inside look into her world of celebrity styling. PR maven Kelly Cutrone, who initially appeared on The Hills, had her own show about her business called Kell on Earth. Another Hills alum Whitney Port had a spinoff called The City, where she worked at Diane Von Furstenberg before starting her own line. And then, of course, there was Project Runway, where young designers competed to create their own line – while Tim Gunn yelled at them to "make it work."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I watched every episode of those shows - some of them several times. I didn't realize it at then, but that was my fashion education. A sort of glossy and made-up version of each job in the fashion industry that I knew I loved but had no idea about. 

Rachel Zoe taught me what styling was in practice and how clothing gets onto red carpets. In one episode, she sees an Armani gown on the runway and immediately calls it in for Anne Hathaway's Oscar red carpet look. The drama was with a train - Zoe insisted they make one, and it had to be right for "Annie." Through the melodrama, I understood how and why the red carpet was important.

Kelly taught me how buyers interact with brands and how showrooms operate. In one episode, she tells a designer to be prepared for a buyer to ask for her outfit in another color that their customer would prefer. I never realized there was a choice. Teen Vogue editor Lisa Love taught me what it might be like to work at a magazine - famously highlighting the stakes of taking or giving up opportunities like going to Paris for a job. Whitney Port showed me what it meant to work for a top fashion brand highlighting how much of business every aspect of fashion is.

It might seem strange, but these shows were a jumping-off point for me. A way to speak a language I didn't understand. It gave me a way to fake it. I had just enough information to make my way through a conversation with someone if I could only get myself close enough. The timing was during the recession, and in many ways, the purpose was democratization. It was a way to bring this big, expensive, unattainable industry into the homes of the masses, including a teenager who desperately wanted to be part of it. 

Still, the shows gave me plenty of wrong ideas too. I thought you were supposed to work 14 hours a day because another girl would kill for your job. I thought you were supposed to withstand meanness based on what brand you wear, and cry in the bathroom while no one was looking. And the worst was the idea that pleasing those at the top of the fashion industry was the number one and only way to succeed.

The hierarchy is a major theme in each of these shows. Where you sit, who you know, and who you bow down to can make or break your career. It's the way the drama is built. And to an extent, it's real. Every season at fashion week, there are conversations about who gets in where and why. This ingrained hierarchy is a tool to maintain the status quo - one that doesn't talk about the systemic issues, such as labor rights for the models on the runways. Or the rights of those who are making the clothing. Opulence and entitlement are the most important value.

In thinking back on the shows a decade later, in the context of fashion month and my own evolving fashion career, I wonder if much has changed. Surely, in an industry built on looking toward the future must have? Perhaps things are more accessible because of social media. The language of fashion is more ubiquitous. Otherwise, it seems like we’ve done a better job at pretending there isn’t an imbalanced structure rather than dismantling it.