The City: Stop Being So Sketchy
Due to an unfortunate TiVo glitch, we couldn't watch The City last night, but thankfully there are plenty of budding social reporters out there who can fill in for us. Here is one promising dispatch.
Olivia Palermo Finally Does Something Right
By Betsey Morgenstern
New York Social Diary Staff Writer
Yesterday, Olivia Palermo finally learned what it was like to be a working girl, and it had nothing to do with being a hooker or Melanie Griffith. Socialite Palermo, who is now an accessories editor at Elle magazine, the fashion bible that lives to support any reality television program that appeals to a young female demographic, finally pleased her boss, Joe Zee, the chipper head of Elle.
"I was beginning to have my doubts, because every five minutes Erin, our head of publicity, is coming to me and telling me how horrible and incompetent Olivia is, but I knew she could do it," Zee told us in an exclusive interview. "She made my A to Z feature amazing with all the awesome accessories she pulled. I loved everything. She's going to be a star. And not like a crappy reality star, like a real magazine star!"
Palermo, who would not be interviewed for this story, made her victory lap thanks to meetings with Badgely Mischka, Rachel Roy, and Roberta Feymann and they gave her all the cool stuff to bring back to Joe Zee. She even took pictures of the their sunglasses, handbags, and necklaces and printed them out like real old pictures. Palermo's retro touch seemed to win over the boss.
"She's just so refined and elegant, and I would never give up the chance to have my goods appear in Elle," says Rachel Roy, one of New York's hottest designers.
"I'm the one who got her that meeting at Mischka," says Erin Kaplan, head of PR for Elle. "She couldn't have done this without me. Listen here, Betsey, I hate Olivia because she's prettier and richer than me and I had to work for everything in my life. I am going to get her fired. That's all I want. That and a coat made out of 101 dalmatians. And maybe half of my hair dyed black."
Maybe Whitney Port, who works at People's Revolution, the fashion PR firm headed up by batty-headed publicity maven Kelly Kutrone, could learn a thing or two from Palermo. After she showed Kutrone, who has no background in design, the sketches for her fashion line, Kutrone said not to show them to anyone. Roxy Carmichael, the gravelly voiced toxic friend who lives with Port convinced her to show the sketches to a buyer at Bergorf Goodman.
"I wanted to just laugh in her face, but there were all these cameras there, and I find it hard to laugh these days because of all the Botox," said the buyer, who would only give her first name, Sunni.
After her humiliation Kutrone scolded Port in her office and told her that she was talented, but she needs to know how to work her connections like Palermo. "Being a rich, beautiful socialite like Olivia Palermo will get you everywhere in life," says Kutrone. "I love Whitney, she's going to take off, but I'm not going to let her embarrass me before she does."
Roxy Carmichael would not return calls or emails requesting comment, but she was spotted smoking a cigarette in front of the People's Revolution office. When asked about her decision to convince Whitney to go to Bergdorf with the sketches, Carmichael said, "Fuck off," flicking a cigarette at a reporter.
Now that is a low-class movie that Olivia would never tolerate.