Fame-Whoring Your Way to Fashion Credibility

The reality-celebrity is a West Coast invention. As a former Los Angeles resident, and a native Angeleno, I can tell you living there is a bit like a Twilight Zone episode. Anything west of Sunset, is like driving into a David Lynch film. You have fake-actors pretending to be Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Fifteen photographers hounding some non-celebrity right next to homeless man begging for change. And all along Beverly Hills, aged beauty queens with more plastic in them than Amanda Lepore.

In short, it’s all about whoring yourself out.

With the new season of ‘The Hills‘ premiering tonight, a new trend in whoring yourself has begun. Whoring yourself into credibility. Or at least trying to. Lauren Conrad has been everywhere this past week, reminding us that her ambition is not to be followed around by a camera crew but rather for FASHION! Because let’s remember fashion is newest career choice for the vapid. You know what being a model/actress was a decade ago.

In the Weekend Editon of the Wall Street Journal (Yes the great Wall Street Journal actually wrote an article about that chick from the Hills) Conrad’s ‘team’ talk about building the Conrad brand. Since the beginning of the Hills run, Conrad has had an agent by the name of Max Stubblefield. In their first meeting she stressed that her real interest was being a fashion designer. Thus her agent plunged into the ubiquity of celebrity branding. In the past two years, Stubblefield has landed Conrad numerous licensing and endorsement deals. That’s busnisness speak for ‘other people do the work and a relatively famous person puts their name on it’. Then last Tuesday, Conrad debuted her first collection at Los Angeles Fashion Week, the Special Olympics of all the fashion weeks. And how was her collection? I’d say she has a future in design, if she were designing for Forever 21 that is. Because her clothing were blatant rip off of other designers. But buyers don’t listen to me because her clothing is featured in 500 boutiques around the country!!!

Do you hear that Fashion Indie readers? That’s the sound of indie designers throwing themselves from their apartment windows cause they just realized that instead of heading to four years at an accredited school like my near and dear Parsons, they should have been out whoring themselves for MTV, Bravo, or any other camera crew willing to follow their sorry asses around. (I hear that Girls Gone Wild is back on the prowl, hmmm?)

The problem with Lauren Conrad can best be described as a major problem with society and our respect for the craft and dedication to the art of fashion.  Hopefully Ms. Conrad’s latest endevour fades faster than a Paris Hilton flick that doesn’t include a money shot.

If not she’ll always have the camera crews!