AllyG: I promised you this last week, and I am so late in getting it to you. Yes, it is my post about The Hills, aka the show I love to hate/watch obsessively. Now, this ain’t no Gossip Girl folks, you won’t get the chic, upper East Side carefully crafted outfits on this show. No, The Hills offers up a buffet of Tacky Le Tack clothing and accessories week after week. The only one that gets a hall pass occassionally is my face Whitney (who now has her own craptaculous show The City).

I think one of the most tragic events of 2007 was when Heidiwood (Heidi Montag’s clothing line) outsold LC’s line. I could have spent an entire day in bed contemplating the ways of the world with that news. I literally cringe everytime Heidi comes on screen. Literally. I cringe. Her outfits are beyond bad taste. Is this really what the young kids are wearing in LA these days?

Now, this here above is part of Heidi’s “collection”. It’s a joke, right? I mean, Heidi and Spencer are many things, but the kids can promote themselves well. They knew if Heidi came out with a line of “Ladies of the Evening” wear people would talk and talk and talk.  On the other hand, maybe this is real as Heidi does actually wear this crap on the show (also, have you seen her beach “candids”?).

While Lauren’s fashion line doesn’t stand out, it at least has a bit more “class”. Here’s a clip of Lauren’s line at LA Fashion week circa 2008. The music will make you want to chew your eyeballs like bubblegum to make the pain go away, but the clothes aren’t terrible.

I particularly like LC’s MacKenzie Dress seen below. I’d wear this…about 20 pounds ago.

We couldn’t move on from LC and Heidi without adding a spectacular tribute video. Cue the music.

Moving on to Audrina.

This is one of the only photos I could find where she is not in her bikini. Nuff said.

Word on the street is that they are making a Gossip Girl reality show. I would totally buy into that. Can you imagine how much better the drama and clothes will be? Am I too old to watch this? Are these shows like the Le Chateau of television? Do I need to walk on by?

On an aside (which is one of my favourite sayings), I came across these fantastic new plastic gladiator shoes from Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci in the July issue of Vogue.  

According to the Fashion Bible (caps required), these shoes are v. comfortable and I would call them a fantastic investment piece as they are priced around $165 (American, but still…they’re GIVENCHY). They’re like high-class jelly shoes. ‘Member jelly shoes? I love jelly shoes.

L-A: Okay, so, I’m going to start with apologies. We’re slow off the mark today. Life sort of got in the way of blogging.

First things first. I do not like those Givenchy plastic gladiators. They look like designer crocs and That is Not Okay. But I did love jelly shoes. Didn’t jelly shoes try to make a comeback recently? I think they did, but they couldn’t convince grownups to wear the plastic shoes they wore as kids. Ah well, not really a loss. The world doesn’t need more plastic shoes. We’re still beseiged by the dang croc (the Croc, it appears, is the Official Footwear of the Gosselin family).  But today is not about plastic shoes. It is about “reality” TV though. Not Gosselins, but the plastic, sunshiney, so cheesy it’s good, you know you love it Hills:

My absolute favourite moment was early Season One when Heidi decided school wasn’t her bag: after the first day! And then complained to her boss Brent Bolthouse that she thought she’d start of doing more glamourous party planning, not envelope stuffing on day two of that job (and they kept her on, why?).  I knew then that I could love this show.  Sadly, I don’t watch it nearly as often as I’d like because I don’t get MTV and I often forget to go watch it online.  That’s the trouble with the Hills, it’s easy to forget. But the stars of the show are very good at not letting you forget them. In fact, they are practically publicity geniuses.  Even if you’ve never seen an episode, you can name these two yahoos:

I’m not usually one to poke fun at someone’s last name, but I think we can all be amused by the similarity between Spencer Pratt and the word prat. But want to know what makes me happy about these two?  They may be on the wane. That’s right. E! viewers have voted against them and they are now banned from the network until they do something that is actually newsworthy (something other than wear bunny ears or feed each other a taco). (You know what else is Not Okay: Heidiwood. I am aghast to learn it outsold LC’s line. LC’s line wasn’t spectacular, but you could wear it and be secure in the knowledge that you did not look like a complete tramp)

The truth is, I like Lauren. She too is good at marketing herself, even if she can’t launch a successful clothing line.  She may not be able to design clothes, but she can dress herself in other people’s designs and look incredible, even if she does wear a few too many jersey dresses (they’re cute, but why all the jersey LC?):

I don’t know about you, but I’d kill for that hair. And to be able to pull off a dress like that. I also think she’s smarter than Speidi at marketing herself because she knows when to jump ship.  MTV has just done a complete restructure of their programming staff and that can’t mean good things for The Hills.  The kids can only take so much of The Hills and I’m not sure Kristen Cavallari can save the series.

But do you know who I really love? Kelly Cutrone and Lo Bosworth.  Those girls bring the snark. From day one, Lo couldn’t even pretend to hide her contempt for Audrina. While everyone else patted Audrina on the head and said, “there there, at least you’re pretty. You don’t need to be smart”, Lo’s face said it all.

It usually said “you’re as dumb as a bag a bricks and I can’t believe I’m only getting $10k per episode to spend time with you. You know I have a degree from UCLA, right? That alone makes me thirty times smarter than you”. Some people call Lo the devil, I call her awesome. The LA Times agrees with me.

The other devil on the show is none other than Kelly Cutrone:

She’s bitchier than thou, doesn’t even bother to wear makeup or dress in unfrumpy clothing (despite the fact that she executes shows for big name designers), and clearly doesn’t give a shit about what the viewing audience of The Hills thinks of her. If it weren’t for all the publicity her business gets from the show, I’d say I was surprised that she hired Lauren and Whitney. Whitney has never come off as the shiniest coin in the fountain and the first time Kelly met Lauren at a fashion show, she made Lauren cry (Lauren wasn’t very good at what she was asked to do and Kelly appears to have little patience for screw ups, firing even the unpaid interns).  How much does Kelly not give a shit about you or anyone else? Well, she invited one of Spitzer’s escorts to sit front row at a show, which got her fired by the designer, but still she declared she was “vehemently opposed to morality”.  Seriously. Take that, morality! Kelly Cutrone is firing you. (and why not. She made Lauren fire She-Pratt).  I feel like Kelly “gets” The Hills and her place in this 15 minute fame bubble. She was married to a Warhol Factory regular.

Anyway, if you’re bored of the Hills and looking for something a little more Gossip-girl in your reality, Ally was on the money about that show. It’s called NYC Prep and it’s on Bravo (the American Bravo, not the Canadian one).

Actually, you’re probably better off sticking with The Hills for now. NYC Prep isn’t pretty or interesting enough. And I personally cannot deal with Sebastian’s Jonas brothers/Leif Garrett hair or his skanky ways (he’s not cute enough to get to sleep around with that many girls).

Again, sorry for the lateness of this post.

You know we love you!

xoxo.

L-a