'The City': Whitney doesn't owe Olivia any favors

After Whitney Port’s fashion show, the reviews were generally good. On this episode of “The City,” Whitney moved into the next step: getting her line some media coverage.

Whitney’s frenemies in high places
After a pretty positive response to her line, Whitney gets together a showing for editors. If they like what they see, then they may include Whitney’s clothes in stories and editorial spreads. Roxy, who’s doing awesome work so far, has the task of inviting the editors to the event. After emailing Elle and getting no response, Roxy decides to call Olivia the day of the event to see if she can attend. After all, she and Whitney know each other.

That call was frustrating for me. I can’t imagine what it was like for Roxy. Olivia, who believes she’s some type of seasoned editor, basically lectured Roxy for calling her so late. To her credit, she decides to go anyway. Part of me believes she just wanted to go and act dismissive and important around her old coworker (who happened to have just had a fashion show at New York Fashion Week). OK, all of me feels that way. She barely looked at the clothes and Whitney’s look book. Instead, she talked about her new gig with Elle.com. I love when Whitney said, “Wow, you’re like a little journalist.” Um, Whitney, she’s not some little journalist, she’s editor-in-chief of Olivia magazine.

I loved when she went back and told Erin the line was inconsistent and not worthy of being included in a story on emerging designers in the magazine or on the website. Erin looked disgusted by Olivia’s easy dismissal. I think Olivia was using what little power she had to foil Whitney’s success.

Roxy gets her own gig and a date (kinda)
Zach Hyman comes in to talk to Kelly Cutrone about a photo gig. The young photographer does these guerrilla-style photos of naked people in everyday scenes. When he walks in, he definitely catches Roxy’s eye. When he and Kelly start talking about him shooting naked people on the subway, Roxy is all up in their business. Kelly notices, so she invites Roxy in. Then, Kelly assigns Roxy to style the project. It’s great that she got to do her own thing totally independent of Whitney. You can tell she was excited about it too.

It was fun watching Zac and Roxy out on the street pulling everyday people in to model. The best part was how willing these real-people models were to get involved in the shoot. Afterward, Zac nervously asked Roxy what her “situation” was and she lets him know she’s single. I love how she avoided saying yes to a date. Well, Zach didn’t actually get to the part when he specifically asks her for one, but it was pretty clear that’s what he wanted. Way to make him chase, Roxy!

Erin saves the day
Hands down, Erin Kaplan is my favorite person to watch and you have to love when she really sticks it to Olivia. Poor editor-in-her-own-mind Olivia was totally overruled in Joe Zee’s editorial meeting. Right after Olivia said Whitney’s line didn’t meet her high standards, Erin dropped the Ruelala bomb. She was able to get around Olivia and nominate Whitney for an emerging designers feature on Ruelala.com. Then, the senior editors started chiming in with positive reviews of Whitney’s collection. I’m surprised Olivia didn’t just start screaming, “I’m melting, I’m melting” from embarrassment.

Back at Peoples Revolution, Kelly tells Whitney about the Ruelala feature and how Elle nominated her. Right away, Whitney assumes that Olivia had something to do with the feature. Afterward, Roxy told Whitney that the only downside was that she owes Olivia for helping her out. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Do you think Olivia was right about Whitney’s line or do you think she had ulterior motives for not wanting to cover it?

By the way, Kelly Cutrone has a new channel on YouTube called KellyCutroneTV where she and the People’s Revolution crew post to often.

Check out Kelly’s video recap of Tuesday’s episode:

-- Jethro Nededog (follow me on Twitter @TheRealJethro)

RELATED:

'The City' sneak peek: Olivia pans Whitney's line

'The City' premiere: Whitney waves goodbye to average

All ‘The City’ coverage on Show Tracker

Photos: From top, Whitney Port; Zach Hyman and Roxy Olin; Erin Kaplan and Olivia Palermo. Credit: MTV

Comments

[Mike]

this lady is insane.

[sommerday]

If Olivia is building her rep to be 'the dastardly Cruella De Vil' (101 Dalmations) for any reality show or as a movie actress, she is doing 'wamba-jamba-woo'!

[Victoria Belle-Miller]

I think Olivia was completely wrong about Whitney's clothing line. She definitely has some ulterior motive for not wanting to help Whitney; I'm just curious to see what it is. Creating a fashion line is a tremendous amount of work and Olivia simply just dismissed Whitney's line for whatever stupid, selfish reason. I think the thought of helping someone else makes Olivia physically ill. She is so self-involved and has created this illusion in her head that she is the most important person in the world and everyone should just cater to her. She irks the hell out of me. She is a b**ch with a capital "B". She obviously has very low self-esteem since she constantly feels the need to keep others down and she always has to put herself in the center of everything. She keeps calling herself an editor, but at Elle Magazine she is simply a small fish in a big sea of much more important people. She is just too high on her self-made pedestal to realize it. I'm glad Erin put her in her place and hopefully others will too. She is lucky she still has a job. In the "real world" you cannot talk to your superiors, or anyone for that matter, like that and not get fired. Whitney has a positive attitude and will likely go pretty far (of course her resources and connections don't hurt), but Miss Negative Nancy will soon be burned when people get tired of putting up with her crap. I wonder how she feels about how she comes across on the show. I'm sure she doesn't even care. But here is some helpful advice for Olivia: Try doing something nice for someone and maybe good ole karma won't bite you in the a**. Can't wait to see what happens on next week's show!

[Barton Fink]

Olivia is so awesome.

[lulu]

Actually, Whitney owes Olivia big time for Elle's favorable response! If Olivia hadn't been so obvious that her dismissal of Whitney's line was about exercising what little power she (thought she) had, Erin wouldn't have leapt at the chance to prove Olivia wrong.

[Jethro Nededog]

That's a very good point, Lulu!