In the third season of Selling Sunset, which premiered on Netflix last month and documents the showings (and sales) of multimillion dollar homes in Los Angeles, real estate agent Christine Quinn walks into the offices of The Oppenheim Group in a neon green sweater with a matching plaid skirt. Her colleague, Heather Rae Young, immediately clocks her outfit and says, “You look like the Joker.” Quinn replies, “Thank you, I feel like it all the time.”
Quinn’s coworkers aren’t the only ones analyzing her fashion choices on the show. Since the new season has aired, her loud, capital-F fashion outfits have been the talk of Twitter. Each episode has become a feeding ground for dissecting Quinn’s exuberant wardrobe, which includes everything from rainbow fur coats to teal power suits—always worn with sky-high Christian Louboutin heels. Some are fans of her brazen confidence; others feel her looks are over-extravagant, considering the workplace setting. “My wardrobe has always been over-the-top and bold,” Quinn tells Vogue. “It’s something that people love or they hate, but I feel like if they hate it, it's because they can't afford it.” Quinn insists her over-the-top style is always in effect, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. “The only thing I amp up is the drama,” she says. “In real estate, people do their best to dress very conservatively. I’ve never done that. It shouldn’t matter what I’m wearing. I can be a boss bitch and look like a stripper in Versace.”
The fascination around Quinn’s wardrobe does bring up a larger point: Dressing for reality TV presents an interesting challenge for today’s casts. Unlike scripted shows, there is still often little to no budget for wardrobe, let alone clear direction for what one should wear for the cameras. Yet, there is still an expectation for stars to have a look. As a result, reality TV has really developed its own style genre over the years. With no rules, the fashion choices on reality have grown to such insane levels today, that wardrobe now serves as a character in itself—the more deranged, the better. Entire reality shows have evolved playing off this appetite for outrageous style: Series such as The Hills, The Rachel Zoe Project, America’s Next Top Model, and Next in Fashion all pride themselves on having high-fashion “characters.” Quinn is only one of many reality stars who have profited off taking risks. But, this hasn’t always been the case.
Reality’s Humble Roots
Reality TV’s evolution from trashy, guilty-pleasure viewing to becoming a high fashion playground has been a slow burn. While Big Brother is often thought to be the first modern reality show, An American Family, produced in 1973, was the genesis of the genre and documented the lives of a “regular” American family for seven months. Two decades later in the ’90s, reality found its footing by capturing people’s normal, everyday lives. Shows such as The Real World took over mainstream TV ratings with its real-life ensemble crew, a concept that would later take off in the 2000s, with similar shows such as Big Brother.
In the ’90s, MTV’s House of Style offered a high-fashion perspective on the genre, lending a glimpse inside the glamorous lives of supermodels, starring catwalk stars such as Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Claudia Schiffer. The appetite for fashion reality TV continued to grow in the 2000s. On the first season of The Simple Life in 2003, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were plucked from Beverly Hills and placed on a farm in Arkansas; the city girls captured American’s attention by milking cows in matching Dior bags, Von Dutch hats, and Juicy Couture sweatsuits. They styled their out-of-place ensembles during a time when reality TV was still very much organic and unplanned. In the years that followed, however, reality began shaping its own genre—and the production value raised as a result. In other words, stars were afforded external teams to craft their perfect, on-screen looks. Stars weren’t just being born, like Hilton and Richie were. They were being created.
The Rise of Reality TV Stylists
The rise of reality TV stylists is no more apparent than on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. In the initial seasons beginning in 2007, the family was lovable, fame-seeking, and had trendy (but hardly trend-setting) style. But now each Kardashian sister has their own fashion vibe (and glam team), and they are the ones setting the trends that both fellow stars and designers reference. Bike shorts? Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier? You can thank Kim for making those trends mainstream.
In 2011, Love & Hip Hop premiered on VH1. Today, the cast is made up of heavyweight stars who, like the Kardashians, have their own stylists and glam teams for the show. One of Love & Hip Hop New York’s biggest stars is Yandy Smith. For her outfits on the show, she has worked with the stylist Vladimyr Pierre-Louis for the past five years. Stars like Smith are not only beginning to work with stylists to craft a signature look on-camera, but they’re also using fashion to tell a storyline—a new form of costume design that toes the line between fiction and reality. “For me, it depends on who I’m shooting with, what the scene is, and if I like the person or not,” Smith tells Vogue. “If I don’t like you, you’re going to get super cute—the Yandy that’s all the way put together.”
On Love & Hip Hop, the reunion episodes are where the stars bring their fashion A-game. Cardi B, for instance, wore full Gucci for one. “We go all out,” Smith says. “That’s like a month's preparation.” Unlike the more candid everyday scenes (or at least ones that are supposed to be unscripted) the reunion episodes are a pre-planned event where the aim of the game is to stand out. “We have to submit some outfits [for approval], because you can't have people going in all these crazy directions,” says Rasheeda, who stars on the Atlanta series. “Sometimes there’s a theme that you have to stick to.” What they wear on the show also drives sales for the brands and garments featured. “I have boutiques, so a lot of times I'll wear stuff, and when they see me on the show with it, it sells out,” she says.
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Turning Reality Into Fantasy
If anyone knows how to dress up for an audience, it’s Erika Jayne, who stars on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She frequently decks herself out in full-runway looks from Versace, Christian Cowan, and Moschino. Much of this is thanks to Mikey Minden, who has been working as her creative director since 2009, pre-Housewives (he choreographs her music videos, and has also worked with the Pussycat Dolls.) When Real Housewives came knocking in 2015, he and Jayne saw an opportunity to elevate the franchise, turning reality-based looks into their dream fashion fantasies. “Erika is a real fashion girl at heart,” says Minden. “She's been collecting pieces for over 20 years, so her archive at her house is insane. For the show, it was about showing all these different sides of Erika's fashion personality.”
Jayne, Minden, and stylist Dani Michelle approach Jayne’s fashion for the show with the seriousness of a seasoned Hollywood costume designer. “She’s just not one of those girls that goes and buys every single label, then stacks it on top of each other and calls it fashion,” says Minden. “There's always a story, theme, and character behind all the looks that we pull out.” Typically, they will begin a season with a creative call to brainstorm looks for the episodes ahead. “Every look that she wears, we also log into a creative deck on a PowerPoint presentation, so we never repeat things,” Minden says. While it’s a reality show, Minden says there is a certain sense of showmanship that is involved in the process. “She’s a showgirl,” he says of Erika. “When the red light goes on and you're filming, you’re putting on a show.”
Not everyone is on board with how orchestrated reality TV looks can be these days, however. Quinn says she would still never hire a stylist. “I feel like it's something I'm never going to use, because I just love pulling all the looks myself,” she says. (She has personal shoppers from brands such as Gucci and Balenciaga feeding her first access to pieces.) “Someone can dress you the way that they think you should be, but you’re the only person that knows how you should really dress.” Even Love & Hip Hop’s Smith agrees that, for the most part, dressing for the show should still be entirely up to you at the end of the day. “With reality TV, what a lot of people don't know is that they don't give you all the information,” she says. “No one tells you what to wear. They’ll tell you, it’s a casual scene, or it’s a formal scene, and that’s it. You have to figure out your own story that you want to tell upon the walk in.” And these days, reality stars are not just tiptoeing into fashion territory—they’re strutting in full-throttle, looks ablaze.