It’s been several years since Whitney Port spun-off from MTV’s The Hills for her own show about living in New York and trying to make it as a fashion designer. Perhaps she sensed a sinking ship in Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, Ms. Port chose to attach herself instead first to Lauren Conrad and Teen Vogue, and then People’s Revolution and Kelly Cutrone and socialite-in-training Olivia Palermo.
It was the right call, as evidenced by the fact that The Speidi zeitgeist couldn’t get photographed even if they wanted to these days, while Ms. Port has actually succeeded in transforming herself from reality show star to an IRL designer.
While taking our (front row!) seats at Ms. Port’s Fashion Week show for her line Whitney Eve, we couldn’t believe how many people had woken up in time for the early. 9 a.m. show with the hopes of even getting standing room. While young women clawed each other for seating, we heard a women from the second row complain when an usher tried to boot her out of her seat: “But I’m doing a whole story on Whitney! I’m supposed to be backstage with her after the show!”
Eventually Ms. Cutrone herself had to come out and settle the situation. “Who are you with?” Ms. Cutrone asked, all smiles.
“Paper/Purple magazine,” huffed the woman from either Paper or Purple.
“Okay,” Ms. Cutrone turned to the woman trying to snag the seat currently occupied by the journo. “You, sit over there,” she said pointing to another section. Another lady was banished to the standing section.
“Sorry!” chirped Ms. Cutrone. “We eat like wolves, we play like wolves.” Or was that work like wolves? We weren’t sure where that idiom originated, but we were glad to be on Ms. Cutrone’s good side. We didn’t want to be devoured by wolves.
When the show began, we saw that Whitney Eve’s models for the most part had one thing in common besides the required height/weight: they were blond. And not just blond, but the same type of dirty blond that Ms. Port herself sported.
“It’s just so refreshing to see models in flats for a change,” remarked a stylist for Jacqui Stafford. During Fashion Week, that almost passes as diversity.
