'The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City' Are Playing Pretend

Seasons of The Real Housewives were once structured like family-based documentaries on secluded enclaves of the wealthy.

The seasons turned and they became soap operas about the inner lives of middle aged women confronting the impossibility of a world that had short changed them. As the golden era gave rise to the imperial phase, crime and scandal descended on the fringes of their world. In the empire’s core, political rifts widened cast divisions and revolts were staged at the walls of the palace.

Into that fray emerged The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, a cohort of Mormon women and one Christian minister with a shadowy past. They represented the emerging social class at the helm of society — religious, repressed and richer than God. (Some of them, anyway.) Over the ensuing five seasons they waged guerilla warfare on Bravo’s scheduling lineup. The skirmishes were successful, and they have, in their own way, inherited the keys to the kingdom. But in the ways their beliefs represented the new world order at large, their interpersonal dynamics were a mirror as well.

What happens on this show is less “reality television” and more community theatre broadcast into the homes of gullible Americans — much like traditional newsmedia, the average White House press briefing or those ongoing Congressional hearings with the FBI director. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is a stage through which reality is constructed, not represented or witnessed.

And there I am, glued to the television. Maybe I am searching for meaning, or absolution, in the play pretend.

Angie Katsanevas

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and if we’re lucky, I’ll wake up the rest of my life in a sort of groundhog day state where the first words out of my mouth are: “Thank god for Angie Katsanevas.”

We have watched stars of The Real Housewives attempt a merge at form and function for the last ten years since Erika Jayne came on the scene in metaphorically shoplifted couture. It has been mostly unsuccessful, seeing as the spirits of these women are impure; they reject the fashions that adorn them, fashions that mark them as frauds.

Angie, thankfully, is one of the few rare exceptions. She completely embodies her clothes, even though we all know she only started wearing large statement bows like the confessional look once that Bravo check cleared. (Or maybe it was at gunpoint, when Jen Shah forced her into it.) No matter, because whether she is in this sublime blue dress or a camel trench coat and too big sunglasses — there she is, in a sublime blue dress or camel trench coat and too big sunglasses. Both these looks feel authentically her, unlike all the things Bronwyn comes trodding down the Moschino pink carpet in.

Mary Cosby

Speaking of women who embody their clothing, Mary really does look like a cult leader in a TV show about a cult leader written by John Early and starring Kate Berlant. The gloves against this floral Oscar de la Renta kaftan has to be my top fashion moment of the year on Bravo. It’s just so patently absurd and also completely singular. We see these clothes and ask, who would wear this except a CEO doing human cloning experiments behind the scenes at her Goop-like wellness company in a middling Venice Film Festival hopeful? Well, Mary Cosby, thankfully.

In the same vein, I’m obsessed with her contrasting RV fashions, opposite Angie. Their dueling dynamics and fashion sensibilities give them an aura of crackling electricity. It also means we’re doomed to watch the fate that befell Vicki and Tamra repeat itself again, as it was written in the tablets that form the foundation of our universe.

Bronwyn Newport

I appreciate Bronwyn’s commitment to pissing me off. I appreciate her commitment to dressing like Parker Posey in Josie and the Pussycats, and I appreciate that she keeps the lights on in Christian Siriano’s design studio. I heard she’s among the only Housewives whose credit card goes through — even this look is custom!

If only I could appreciate the look, but I don’t. I look forward to a season of needless fashion aggression between us though, and hope someday she can chatter through a read directed at me in an Instagram Story where the text requires a microscope to read for some reason.

Whitney Rose

Whitney, funny enough, makes the list of embodied dressers, whereas Bronwyn does not. These clothes, more than any other clothes we see on this show, look like they’ve been designed exactly with Whitney in mind. Few people can say that on this network! She just has a face made statement mesh and bustier tops.

Heather Gay

Since Heather is a friend to PAPER, I’ve decided today is when the healing begins between us. For the first time in the three seasons we’ve covered this show in my column, she looks serviceable — good, even, maybe even great! These Ferragamo and Tom Ford dresses are perhaps the best she’s got in her closet, and wow, don’t the colors just pop against her skin.

That said, I think it’s time she put down the Utah blonde and pick up something with a bit more punch to it — red, brunette even? I think a proper strawberry blonde could also be the moment! Anything but her overly highlighted, boob-length tresses.

Britani Bateman

Britani also makes our list of embodied dressers. I mean, I just don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman more suited to work the sunglasses counter at Saks Fifth Avenue than this lady, what with her snakeskin shift dresses, neon blush and heavy lash extensions.

I wonder if she saw the dailies from that first confessional and switched the whole look up, considering there’s a night and day difference between the juvenile hair in the first look and this mature, honey blonde lob in the second. Even her blush got brighter, somehow!

Various Coats

Look at all these fur coats! Look at these wintery women in the prime of their lives. They’re like if Jadis the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia had access to reality TV.

Images courtesy of NBC Universal