It all started with Sky Tops. When Real Housewives of Orange County premiered in 2006, the show’s biggest fashion statement was these often sheer, often satin, often sleeveless tops with embellishments and jewels around the (often surgically enhanced) neckline.
These days, if you tune into one of the eight Real Housewives programs on Bravo (or two others on Peacock’s streaming service), it’s a whole other story: Gucci prints, high-end logos on everything from sunglasses to scarves, and earrings that read CHA on a lob and NEL in the other. that are so common you’d think Andy Cohen gave them as part of an initiation ritual.
“It has changed completely”, says the journalist homemakers brave Amy Odell. “Now part of the reason people watch is to see what the ladies are wearing.” It’s not just fans who have noticed a change. Ur-Housewife Bethenny Frankel acidly commented on her podcast that behind the scenes is an army of “teams and costumes and hairpieces and a whole fashion show.” And yet the on-screen fashion show can be more real than the one that walks the red carpet, where celebrities are more often than not playing with step-and-repeat outfits.
Housewives don’t borrow clothes — luxury brands don’t — and they don’t rent runways. To keep up appearances, they are buying their Alexis Carrington Colby jewelry at their own expense. To quote Dolly Parton, it costs a lot of money to look this cheap. “It’s all from my closet,” says Sutton Stracke, of Beverly Hills. “When people write, ‘Sutton should fire her designer,’ I just want to write, ‘I’m my own designer!’
And here’s something else: Housewives move the goods. A lot. Although they aren’t pulling in viewers like they used to (about 1 million an episode at their peak), they still command Instagram followings ranging from 4 million (Beverly HillsKyle Richards) to 10 million (Atlanta‘s Kandi Burruss).
All the stars of the franchise, especially in New York, have always attended fashion shows of some kind. Ramona Singer walked the runway as part of Brooklyn Fashion Week. For the most part these appearances were photo-ops intended to impress the tabloids. Then Erika Jayne exploded in Beverly Hills in 2015, weaponizing her outrageous wardrobe to turn herself and her crew into meme machines. Before her recent legal troubles, Jayne was signed by Rihanna as an ambassador for her underwear line, Savage X Fenty, and walked in the Marc Jacobs and Vera Wang shows.
“Rumble on the Runway” episode 718 of Real Housewives of New York.
Seven years later, almost every member of Beverly Hills cast employs stylists, and so do many women in other cities PotomacGizelle Bryant, whose colorful ensembles are regularly mocked by fans.
“This is going to sound so weird, but what I have to wear is the hardest part for me on the show,” says Crystal Kung Minkoff, who is in her second season of Beverly Hills. “I’m not into fashion. It’s not my job. But fashion is her character in the show.”
So she spent tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, an investment that cut into her $60,000 take as a first-year cast member. Minkoff, an entrepreneur married to filmmaker Rob Minkoff, initially asked two friends, designers Andrea Lublin and Dana Asher Levine, to help her as a favor. With a demand for 100 garments a season, she eventually had to start paying for them. Now Lublin handles the day-to-day filming and Levine handles the narration and reunion episodes.
“There are lunches, dinners, breaks. It’s a lot of content to fill,” says Andrew Gelwicks, a New York stylist who has worked with actresses Lisa Rinna (of Beverly Hills), Carole Radziwill (formerly of New York) and Chrishell Stause, of Netflix’s Selling Sunset. a new reality. that’s trying to take the fashion crown with an F. The holidays are especially scary, as the cast can wear three or more outfits in a day, and god forbid one of the ladies shows up twice in the same sunglasses.
Crystal Kung Minkoff, Dorit Kemsley, Lisa Rinna, Erika Girardi, Kyle Richards, Kathy Hilton, Sutton Stracke and Garcelle Beauvais in 2021.
To make things difficult, most designers cannot call for samples from major fashion houses. One issue is logistics. Housewives shoots on such last-minute production schedules that the cast is often unsure whether they’re going to a black-tie event or Turks and Caicos.
Then there is a more subtle problem. “I tried to appeal to the designers, and they didn’t want their names attached to the show,” says Leslie Christen, an Orange County-based designer who worked with former sitcom actress Heather Dubrow on her season. first seen in 2012. Herein lies the ultimate irony of dressing for the show: The Housewives play celebrities on TV, but they’re not given the same freebies — not the ones they want, anyway. Even Jovani, the evening wear line made famous by Countess Luann de Lesseps, makes Bravo women hand over a credit card to wear prom dresses.
Network casting directors look for cast members who can independently dress the part, because they don’t last much in the way of a salary: less than $2,000, and that’s just for high-stakes reunions.
Marc Jacobs husband Char Defrancesco, Christine Quinn, Kat Gosik and Bijan Souri at the Marc Jacobs Fall 2022 show at the New York Public Library in June 2022.
It was Stracke’s “lifestyle style” that got her into the show in the first place, she tells me, just doing quotes over the phone. Not only is the ex-wife of PIMCO executive Christian Stracke a luxury shopper herself, but she sells a legitimate couturier, Alexis Mabille, at her eponymous store in West Hollywood. (She reportedly receives $300,000 a month in spousal support.) Other cast members raise retail prices for their social uniforms and, more importantly, to keep their games in the series.
Inevitably, bad expensive clothes can make good TV, and they also—shhh—drive sales. When Minkoff wore what Stracke called “ugly leather pants,” the item in question, from Andrea Lieberman’s label ALC, immediately sold out on Net-a-Porter. Stracke is accommodating fans herself by offering items in her store for all budgets, including Mabille dresses and day dresses.
The Housewives: The Real Story Behind The Real Housewives
Luxury heavy hitters are paying attention. For proof that the establishment is softening its stance, just google “Kardashians at the Met Ball.” Reality TV’s first family pioneered the practice of shopping for clothes until they were invited to the party. Cut to this summer, and Christine Quinn of Selling Sunset was front row at Balenciaga’s New York Stock Exchange show.
The label may project an understated public image, but no one in fashion is above making money, and Quinn’s 3 million Instagram followers speak to the spending power of her platform. The realtor was not only there in her capacity as the new queen of Netflix pyrotechnics, but also as the founder herself. In the waning episodes of the fifth season of her series, Quinn had announced that she was leaving real estate brokerage Oppenheim Group to hang up her own shingle, RealOpen. Naturally, it targets the crypto crowd.
Brian Moylan is a journalist, a Real Housewives anthropologist, and the author of the recent New York Times bestseller The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives.
