How Reality TV Shaped The Idea Of Fashion As A Bitchy, Hostile Industry

For a generation who dreamt of working in fashion, the reality TV shows of the mid-00s were a guidebook to the ins-and-outs of the industry. There we were: young kids, working out exactly how we were going to break in, analyzing every moment of The Hills and Kell on Earth, and taking Rachel Zoe and Kelly Cutrone’s every word, every action, directly to heart. Who can forget the time in The Rachel Zoe Project when the office flooded and some stuff got a bit wet and she went off (off!) at her assistant? Or the moment Janice Dickinson took what she thought was ‘a vitamin and a sparkling water’ (actually a sleeping pill and a glass of champagne) on Finland’s Next Top Model and ended up calling a group of young, aspiring models ‘stupid bitches’ who will ‘never make it’? How about on Kell on Earth when Cutrone’s assistant Andrew S. tells the office: “Pharmaceuticals really help in People’s Revolution. If I offer you an Ativan, just take it!” As for the advice peddled by the shows? Take the pills, never sleep, be utterly brutal (and brutalized) were the main takeaways. “Who gives a fuck about her fucking opinion,” asked Cutrone, when she was on The City as Whitney Port’s PR, defending her after Olivia Palermo said her new line, Whitney Eve, was shit. “Who gives a fuck? No, she’s dead. She is fucking dead! I’m gonna fucking come up like a shark underneath a glass-bottomed boat and fucking whip the shit out of her,” she continued. Read more at Dazed.