Stylebook Snapshot: Reality TV shows offer mixed look into fashion industry
November 16, 2014 12:00 AM-
Timothy White/E!
Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, at center, with the women vying for the chance to be her global brand ambassador on the reality TV show "House of DVF." -
Lindsey Byrnes/Oxygen Media
On Oxygen's "Nail'd It," up-and-coming nail artists compete for $100,000. -
Amy Seder
The 2011 Sundance series "All on the Line" featured fashion designer and Pittsburgh native Julia Alarcon and her clothing line Lialia.
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There's a fashion takeover on television these days.
Joining reality TV mainstays such as "Project Runway" and "America's Next Top Model," there's a new crop of shows bringing fashion from the runway into the living room. On the E! network, designer Diane von Furstenberg is in search of a global brand ambassador to travel the world representing her line in "House of DVF" (10 p.m. Sundays). In the Oxygen series "Nail'd It" (9 p.m. Tuesdays), up-and-coming nail artists scratch their way to the top to win $100,000. And for the fashion designers of the future, there's "Project Runway: Threads" (10 p.m. Thursdays), a competition series for teen and tween designers on Lifetime.
"One big reason fashion and beauty topics are a good fit for TV is that there is an aspirational quality to feeling and looking good," Rod Aissa, executive vice president of original programming and development for Oxygen Media said in an email. "Fashion and beauty are subjects that speak to how women feel about their lives and the world around them."
Reality television shows also can offer insights into an industry that can be veiled to the general public.
"It's a very hard industry to access," Kelly Cutrone, fashion publicist and CEO of the public relations firm People's Revolution, said in a conference call with media before a recent season of "America's Next Top Model," for which she's one of the judges. Her latest reality endeavor is "The Kelly Cutrone Project," a digital series on CW Seed (cwseed.com) that offers a behind-the-scenes look at her life in fashion.
On "House of DVF," after just two episodes viewers already have learned a bit about what goes into a look book, a photo shoot and inspiration boards.
"We are getting such great feedback about the show, in particular how dynamic, real and fun Diane is," Jeff Olde, E! executive vice president of programming and development, said in an email. "Plus the audience is getting to see the kind of access we are getting to DVF and feel like they have a front-row seat to the fashion world."
On the flip side, the show also has been accused of a fashion faux pas or two.
The contestants are "constantly stuck in faux-harried situations," Veronique Hyland wrote in a review of the show for NYMag.com. "How are they going to traverse the single block to DVF's office in time for the big challenge? This impossible feat will be the death of them!"
But that's the reality of, well, reality television, says Pittsburgh native Julia Alarcon, 50, a fashion designer who splits her time between New York City and Florida. She's auditioned for such reality TV shows as "Project Runway" and the now-defunct series "Fashion Star" and was picked a few years ago to have the story of her line Lialia (Lee-aah-lia) by Julia Alarcon told in the Sundance series "All on the Line" with Joe Zee, former Elle creative director who now heads Yahoo Style.
The series followed the lives of working designers and gave Ms. Alarcon a chance to present to a buyer.
"They portrayed me 97 percent of who I really am," she said. "They were very kind."
Even so, she saw the producers at work at times crafting her story into a sort of hyper-reality.
"They were very good at getting me to cry," she said. "They would say something very emotional to me."
And when the exchange she had with an expert brought in to give her feedback on her line was deemed as "too dry," another person who was "a lot more colorful" was brought in and was told to "pick her apart a little," Ms. Alarcon said. The advice she hears on the show was that the price range of her line was too high. After the show she lowered it to try to market the line to fine department stores and was told the opposite, she said.
Other reality TV shows can be more extreme in their portrayal (or misportrayals) of the fashion industry.
On "Project Runway," "they put you under a lot of pressure to try to get you to crack," Ms. Alarcon said. Many of the challenges that task designers with making clothes with unorthodox materials on a tight deadline are not realistic. "I've heard about gluing hems and stapling seams" because of the time crunch and atypical work demands.
Despite the liberties taken sometimes in the name of entertainment, the exposure these shows offer is the real deal.
"People in Italy were sending me emails asking me where they could buy the designs that they saw on television," Ms. Alarcon said. "I got a lot of appointments out of it."
For more from Post-Gazette style editor Sara Bauknecht, visit the PG's fashion blog Stylebook at post-gazette.com/stylebook. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @SaraB_PG or email sbauknecht@post-gazette.com.
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