Vive la Cutrone!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 10:24PM 
I've been told that sometimes when I write about women I love, that my posts become sapphic. That's okay with me. This post will be of the sapphic variety, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. No, I'm not trying to kiss-up, this is just how this post came together. And no, I don't care if it gets re-tweeted by @peoplesrev, but that would be fun.
When I went to fashion school at FIDM San Francisco (8 years ago now,) I was put into a little exclusive group of students and we stuck together through all our classes until we graduated. We were special because we had all already had college degrees and were working full time. Every Tuesday & Thursday night (and sometimes Wednesdays too) at 6 PM for 2 ½ years, we showed up with our assignments, got critiqued, got lectured, and got through the evening. We were a tired, stressed, underpaid little family of friends, but we kept each other together. Most of us worked in the fashion world by day during school, and continued on to even better companies and better jobs post-graduation.
We were vastly different from the rest of the girls who went to FIDM who weren’t in this group. Those girls were fresh out of high school, drove BMWs, had beautiful blown-out hair, wore skinny jeans and off-the-shoulder tops, and could barely fulfill their English requirement. Okay, so maybe that’s a generalization, but it’s pretty close to the truth.
At the time I was working in the corporate offices of a major fashion luxury brand, and felt like I was ahead in this matter. The real world doesn’t hire fashion twiglets like these girls, right? They may be in school because their rich parents don’t know what to do with them, but beyond that? The real world wants people with a work ethic, who answer in complete sentences, not people who just sit there, look vacantly pretty, and leave at 4PM for happy hour. That’s how it works, despite what they may show you on TV. Still, the twiglets kept coming (and thriving) in the fashion world of my experience, and there's just no Twiglet-busters to call in dire circumstances.
This was why I was so surprised when Lauren Conrad got hired at Kelly Cutrone’s People’s Revolution in LA. True, she was at the time the anchor “character” of a white-hot MTV reality show, and while the hire was clearly scripted, I could sense that Kelly Cutrone wouldn’t have hired her if she thought the girl was pure fluff and nonsense. The same goes for Whitney Port. However, I could be the one who's wrong here; just based upon the talent and reputation of Ms. Cutrone, she obviously picks her favorites with a very discerning eye.
Like everyone, I wanted more Cutrone after The Hills and The City. She was the one balanced voice of rationality on those shows, consistently calling bullshit when appropriate, with a “fucking” for extra emphasis. A Twiglet-buster extraordinaire. It was refreshing to watch her work on these shows, but you could also tell that this effort was meant these girls to wise-up and get real about the working world.
With the debut of Bravo's Kell on Earth, you could see that this was indeed true. People’s Revolution serves as a nurturing microcosm of the fashion world, running on tough love and realistic expectations. If you’re smart and contribute, you stay. If you can’t hack it, you leave. Ms. Cutrone and her partners give more than a fair dose of chances to people, even to those who clearly won’t rise with the cream.
;)
Olvia, Whitney, Roxy & Erin - Fashion Twiglet Convention (Erin excepted!)In one episode of The City, when Ms. Cutrone rightly expressed her disappointment to Roxy and Whitney for in-fighting during a fashion show. Roxy, in her style, responded with: “She didn’t even say one nice thing,” to which Kelly immediately let it rip. While this scene was especially gratifying since we all love a good Cutrone-style dressing-down, you could tell that Ms. Cutrone doesn’t need to justify herself to anyone. If Roxy can’t even figure that out after first-hand interaction, then she is the ultimate dippy fashion twiglet. Badly done Roxy, goodbye.
I spent this past weekend reading Ms. Cutrone’s new book If You Have to Cry, Go Outside from cover to cover, and found it just as refreshing, forthright, and exhilarating as the lady is on television. It’s a tale full of humor, wisdom, spirituality, and business-savvy, all of which make it equally engaging and practical. I’ve already recommended it to a few friends, especially those who’ve been in the fashion world for a few years. (For us, it's especially exciting to know someone in the industry IS doing something in the effort of twiglet extermination.)
My friend Lee & I talked about it the other night and she mentioned “I told my team that Kelly Cutrone was my hero, and that ‘if you have to cry, go outside’ was my new office rule.” And with a twinkling, wicked little smile she added: “ I think they’re all scared of me now.” We both agreed that we were this close to flying to New York and banging on the door of People’s Revolution to tell Kelly we wanted to work for her, even just to provide some Operations organization to get the printers up and working. Heck, I’d probably even do it for free.
I’m so happy that the industry I love - the fashion world of so much fluff and twiglet-dom, has someone like Kelly Cutrone to knock heads together and get the shit done. I love someone who doesn’t compromise on quality or expectations, who balances a cocktail of fear and love to get results, but who is inherently full of kindness and joie de vivre.
Kelly Cutrone is a teacher for all of us, in all types of business and life, and although I may never meet her she'll be one of my idols for years to come. Vive la Cutrone!
Reader Comments (3)
But I agree with your post about paying it forward and so in the spirit of good bloggership...
I like this chick Cutrone. Your post led me to look her up:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/2/1/nbsp-harvard-fm-kc/
1) she's intriguingly honest
2) she was once homeless
3) she advised her daughter not to go to college
You could do worse for a role model, thanks for recommending her. Note to self: step 1 to changing the world; think like a fashion bitch...
PS - I'm on Squarespace, not WordPress so I don't use a typical platform or template. In Squarespace I'm on Usonian white and then I've made custom modifications. That's the best way I think and what I've always done in the past: start with a white white template and then add your own color. My banner is a gif, so that helped to set the tone.
Please pop by again! xo