Whatever happened to having taste? - The Washington Post

The Real Housewives franchise presents wealth as a uniform experience with occasional regional specialties. The ladies from one city may go shopping at a megamall, while in another they prefer browsing designer clothes outdoors. But nearly every housewife loves a sheath dress, a Gucci handbag and sitting down to lunch to resolve their differences. (It always backfires.) The conformity of the show is what makes the presence of Jenna Lyons, who reinvented J. Crew in the 2000s with an explosive aesthetic of cubicle-bound glamour meets Prada weirdness, so intriguing. She made her debut on the series, which ran from 2008 to 2021 with many recurring cast members, in the 2023 reboot that saw the network scrap the original cast. When her “Real Housewives of New York City” castmates arrive in the Hamptons in a black Escalade, she pulls up to the driveway in a banker blue vintage Mercedes sedan. While her castmates are content to frolic in the awkwardly oversized beige expanse of one cast member

The Real Housewives franchise presents wealth as a uniform experience with occasional regional specialties. The ladies from one city may go shopping at a megamall, while in another they prefer browsing designer clothes outdoors. But nearly every housewife loves a sheath dress, a Gucci handbag and sitting down to lunch to resolve their differences. (It always backfires.) The conformity of the show is what makes the presence of Jenna Lyons, who reinvented J. Crew in the 2000s with an explosive aesthetic of cubicle-bound glamour meets Prada weirdness, so intriguing. She made her debut on the seri