So Chic, Very Chic: Fatal Female Friendships
BY
Joan Summers | Dec 05, 2024
Here’s a few things that women like to do: shop, run for president, write books about failing to run for president and hawk hair brush dryers from the TikTok Shop to impressionable teenagers. We have lots of interests, us women, and we’re always inventing new ones, like arguing about Poster Girl dresses on the internet, or posting screenshots of each other's text messages after a cursed bridesmaid trip to Nashville.
Still, the most important thing women can do is be on reality television and fight with each other. It’s like we have an instinctual need to congregate with our Christian Dior Book Totes in Ecru with the blue Dior oblique embroidery finish and scream in each others’ faces. We walk into small plate eateries, slam our Bottega Veneta Jodie bags down, order Belvedere sodas, wait for a camera crew to file in and start shouting about husbands and children and our candle businesses.
No wonder we connect to the Real Housewives so much, considering they’re just like us and all. While watching Meredith Marks idly argue with Mary Cosby in her Thom Browne Resort 2019 coat in a hotel lobby turned art gallery, dressed in head-to-toe cashmere with thigh high Vetements boots and a Fendi bag, I felt the presence of an amalgam God. I believe he exists somewhere between Mormonism and Judaism and good ol’ fashioned American protestantism.
These new tradwives have it all wrong. Whatever that God’s doing up in heaven, he doesn’t care about Nara Smith’s artisanal cereal recipe or mommy blogging or heteropatriarchical subservience to finance bros. His only wish this Christmas is to watch glamorous women in couture beef about their alimony payments on cable television.
Shall we talk about that couture now? Thankfully, there wasn’t much of it this week.
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Mary Cosby and Meredith Marks
Our first pair of beefing divas come to us in cashmere and Thom Browne. Besides the slouchy Fendi purse that’s all the rage in Manhattan these days (a city Meredith by no means lives in when this show isn’t filming), the most excited I’ve been in weeks was spotting Mary’s Thom Browne coat. It’s not that ol’ Thommy is particularly riveting as a resortwear designer. Mostly, I was shocked he popped up in Salt Lake City at all. Where do they find him out there? Saks?
Still, it’s a bit comical they both showed up to a monochromatic art gallery in equally monochromatic outfits. I expect Meredith to have the stylistic presence of a walking, talking Ambien, but Mary usually shows up like a cross between the Wicked Witch of the West and her sister that got flattened by that house! (This is a joke about shoes, people, in case you’ve already started typing at me.)
Meredith, back in the confessional booth, pulled that hair back tight enough to give herself traction alopecia. The intended effect? Flintstones drag. Seriously, is this our first instance of an entirely fur dress in the confessional booth? I think so! Kudos for the wow factor, even if I wished it read better on camera.
For round two of their brawl, Meredith and Mary put on Burberry and a Louis Vuitton scarf. Well, and a newsboy cap and fingerless gloves and sunglasses that make them look like the don and missus of a prominent New Jersey crime family. Squint, and this could be a still from a deleted scene of The Sopranos — a show I haven’t seen in 15 years but will confidently cite here anyway.
Lisa Barlow and Angie Katsanevas
Round three of the episode concerned Lisa Barlow and Angie Harrington, who feel misunderstood and fatigued. To illustrate the point, Ang put a Chanel brooch over her denim fatigues, and Lisa dyed the wool of some back country road kill. Kidding, of course, because I actually love Lisa’s coat. The ooze-green is actually quite pleasant, and I’d love to borrow it so I can strut around Sprouts on my next grocery run looking self important with my Gucci sunglasses still on.
As for Ang, I’m still not sold on the return of acid wash or denim jumpsuits. I recently tried one on that had sat in storage for a few years and felt an immediate sensation akin to getting repeatedly punched in the dick, only on the psychic plane and entirely made up in my own head. It's unclear if that was the demon possessing the jumpsuit or the ick factor my old clothes produced in me.
Whitney Rose and Heather Gay
As a brief reprieve from the beef zone, Heather and Whitney took a time-out on Whitney’s rented lawn. They’re supposed to be dressed like camp counselors, although they overshot the mark by quite a distance, landing instead near the seniors-only bingo night.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Kyle Richards and Kathy Hilton
This troublesome twosome showed up in a living room in matching drag. Both, it appears, are dressed up for Heather and Whitney’s aforementioned bingo night! In all seriousness, though, it's funny how these two refuse to ever be on the same page. Kathy is permanently stuck in the body of a kooky aunt who may or may not have murdered her husband in a mystery beach read, while Kyle is always dressed for the Freeform adaptation of The Valley of the Dolls. Yes, she's technically in her robe, but use that imagination, ok?
Likewise, it's funny that Dorit noticed the hat’s similarity to her Chanel wardrobe. I’m sure both the Hiltons and Dorit know a thing or two about colonial attire!
Speaking of things a South African emerald mine operator's wife might wear on vacation in Capri, Big Kathy donned this lemon frock with her shiniest diamonds. "Money can’t buy you class," Luann always says, and isn’t that the spookiest thing? The wealthiest women are more often than not dressed like Maxxinistas, not fashionistas. Mark Zuckerberg’s wife is emblematic of this, I think.
The Real Housewives of Potomac
Ashley Darby
Oh, Ashley, whatever are we to do with you? This look is a moment, certainly — a moment in my career I will never forget. She's attempting to look elegant, and maybe a bit sexy, and she’s hit the mark on both! That is, if the mark was on set of CW’s failed historical drama Reign, and she was the court concubine that married a minor Scottish lordling. Remember Harlots, on Hulu? This was on the costume designer’s moodboard. Lucky that Ashley got to inherit a piece of streaming cable history.
Photos courtesy of Bravo/NBCUniversal
