How Jenna Lyons Is Changing the Face of Reality TV
Jenna Lyons brought a nuanced sense of style to ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’ that changed the rules of the program. So what happens now?
Handwritten invitations, fondue, candlelight, and predetermined questions about sex – this was Jenna Lyons’ rendition of a girls’ night. The fashion icon and former creative director and president of J.Crew was the first to admit she wasn’t comfortable with things like sleepovers or dressing for the male gaze. And yet, there she was, hosting her first-ever girls’ night with the season 14 cast of The Real Housewives of New York City (aka RHONY) – a franchise known for its beauty-obsessed, arch girl-boss ethos and its unabashed adherence to traditional gender roles.
But if Lyons was uncomfortable, so were her castmates. When she asked that each of the women wear khaki, black, or gold to her special night, the request was met with reactions so outsized it was as if she’d asked them to wear white after Labor Day (an edict that, by the way, even Vogue has now redacted). For their episode 3 excursion to the Hamptons, Lyons brought only jeans. It seemed she had her own ideas about what’s appropriate to wear and when. Let the rift begin.
Lyons’ appearance on Bravo’s RHONY caused a stir from the moment the new season aired. (One headline read: “The Famously Stylish Former President of J.Crew Has Joined the Rebooted ‘Real Housewives of New York City.’ Why?”) After spurring a “roller coaster” of viewership, it was clear she had stolen the show. As the dust settles on what was possibly the biggest event to occupy the overlapping spheres of fashion and reality television this past summer, we can collectively examine from the distance of a few chilly months why Lyons’ presence on RHONY is such a big deal.
Since 2006, when the first-ever episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered, the Housewives franchise has become the guilty pleasure of millions of viewers who gather each season to voyeuristically graze on the ensemble casts’ meltdowns. (For example, and perhaps most infamously, Beverly Hills star Taylor Armstrong’s breakdown produced the crying cat meme.) Each iteration of the show focuses on a specific city. The casts comprise mostly white women, except for the Potomac and Atlanta series, which feature predominately Black women. They are rich strangers, though sometimes socially acquainted, who are brought together by the network to act out an often-scripted, highly dramatic, 14-week friendship. Central to a successful Housewives season is a well-rounded diet of cattiness, messiness, and gorgeous women in tight, sparkling dresses who live aspirational lives (though, not even necessarily as “wives”).
The second iteration of the dynasty, RHONY, was initially titled “Manhattan Moms”; it was rebranded as part of the Housewives franchise in time for its premiere in 2008. And as with all things New York, it’s front and center with its latest season leading a “quiet revolution” in Housewives’ fashion.
Historically, Housewives cast members dress but aren’t fashionable; rather than set trends, they often follow them. They’re not making waves with chunky boots at Met Galas or trailblazing oversized denims and Sambas at Upper East Side playdates. Often, they’re playing into trends and cliché gender roles. “It’s this very outdated, misogynistic caricature of what women are and do,” contemporary designer Sintra Martins, of Saint Sintra, tells me over the phone, after one of her boxy denim designs was featured on this season of RHONY. “That women are catty and women gossip, and especially in the context of them being housewives. It barely passes the Bechdel test. It only does because the husband is implied. He’s this omnipresent figure. The husband, while not a proactive character, is the framework for their lives. It has this very patriarchal superstructure.”
But in 2021, the Housewives universe came to a delicate pause after the New York City series was (finally) called out for its overt racism. It was a cultural inflection point – if reality television wanted to survive society’s more expansive definitions of identity, it would have to adjust its formula. “I’m sure they [at Bravo] realize that if they continue on the trajectory they’re on, they’re going to be limited in the kinds of advertisers they can work with,” says Martins, “so they’re trying to expand their audience.”
Two years later, they did. The New York franchise was rebooted. Not only was the cast noticeably more diverse, it was host to none other than Jenna Lyons.
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Lyons is a huge deal. (IYKYK, and if you don’t, you should.) She made a name for herself at J.Crew, where, starting in 1990 as an assistant designer in menswear, she rose through the ranks to elevate a then-dying retail brand to what would become First Lady Michelle Obama’s Inauguration Day pick. Lyons was famously dubbed “the woman who dresses America” by The New York Times, but she did more than that. In fact, she altered the course of womenswear and menswear as American consumers knew it.
Stylist, influencer, and founder of The New York Stylist Liz Teich describes Lyons as “responsible for taking a masculine basic like a vintage army jacket and pairing it with something feminine like a tulle skirt.… So many of us tried to emulate her style. Creative directors I worked with ripped out pages from the catalog, pinned them up for inspiration, and basically told [their] crew to ‘copy that.’”
As with so many career peaks, a valley followed for Lyons. In 2011, in the midst of divorcing her husband of nine years, she was outed as queer by the New York Post. By 2017, she was collateral damage as J.Crew’s sales dipped and her personal brand steadily grew (allegedly, she was told to “stop self-promoting”). Ultimately, Lyons resigned and spent the next several years attempting to recreate her public image. She even launched her own reality television show, Stylish With Jenna Lyons, in 2020, to middling ratings. Without a powerful position in fashion, she sank into relative obscurity.
Then, during an interview with podcast Dyking Out, in 2022, the idea of Lyons joining the cast of RHONY was born. Was it really so far-fetched that Lyons become a Housewife? Yes.
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Queer, a generation older than the rest, unmarried, and with a flair for dressing in “masculine” clothes, Lyons was a fish out of water in season 14 of RHONY. Add to that a rare genetic disorder, incontinentia pigmenti, that she’s had since birth, which has left her with missing teeth, hair loss, and discoloration all over her body, and her appearance on the show feels arguably heroic. Yet, despite these factors that have, at times, “othered” her from the rest of the Housewives, her position as a fashion legacy still provoked thinly veiled insecurity from her castmates. There was Sai De Silva, a Brooklyn-born fashion influencer; Ubah Hassan, a model from Somalia with a hot sauce label called Ubah Hot; Jessel Taank, a fashion publicist born and raised in London; Erin Lichy, an Israeli interior designer (under the alias “Homegirl”) who has worked in real estate for 20 years; and Brynn Whitfield, a corporate communications and marketing consultant who used to run PR at Assembly. None had the starpower of Lyons.
Yet, like Lyons, most of them had humble origins. Early in the season, they bonded over their painful childhoods during scenes that, while clearly orchestrated for ratings, were nonetheless honest and heartfelt. For a second, it seemed like the cast could transcend the “ostentatious displays of wealth, melodramatic conflicts, high maintenance (and usually gauche) glam, and… unquenchable thirst for recognition” that writer Cady Lang describes as most often associated with a Bravo Housewife. But then Whitfield would do something like tell Lichy’s husband to come find her when he was divorced; or Taank would insult Lyons’ gifts; or De Silva would call Lichy’s cheese weird, and viewers were left to wonder if they’d imagined those few tender moments of humanity.
As the show unfolded, however, another narrative took shape beneath the noise of the women’s catty antics: one of entrepreneurship. It might be tempting to label the women in the Housewives franchise as pawns of ratings-crazed producers, but the truth is, Bravo’s Housewives use the show to publicize their own personal brands. Most successfully, former New York City Housewife Bethenny Frankel sold her Skinnygirl Cocktails brand to Beam Global in a deal worth over $100 million in 2011. What makes Lyons’ addition to RHONY so unprecedented, according to stylist and author of How to Date Your Wardrobe, Heather Newberger, is that “Jenna Lyons isn’t looking for relevance. She is relevance.”
Existing as a fashion institution in her own right, Lyons, though clearly out to self-promote, was able to be herself on the show in ways that the other Housewives were not. After all, RHONY wasn’t Lyons’ first opportunity to bask in America’s undivided attention; and she certainly wasn’t out to win over the fans. (In fact, she’s expressed concern about being introduced to a new generation as a Housewife rather than the Lyons of yore.) By virtue of this subtle power imbalance, she – unlike the rest of the women – got to act kind of… normal.
Ahead of the Hamptons weekend, Lyons admitted to being insecure about having never gone on a girls’ trip. She said, “I’m nervous that, like, I’ll be awkward. I’m not going to fit in. I’m nervous I’ll say something stupid. I’m nervous I’ll, like, need alone time and everyone will be like, ‘What the hell? Why?’ But, I’m here and I’m excited – like, cautiously excited."
As one TikToker put it: “I have never related to a housewife more in my life.”
Fashion journalist Amy Odell notes in her Substack, Back Row, “[Lyons] behaves in the rational way that fellow ‘I would never go on that show’ viewers like to believe they would behave. She projects insouciance and logic in a sea of striving and illogic.”
Lyons’ relaxed distance from the fray created just enough space to help transform what some would view as a sexist, stereotyped female fracas into a group of real women struggling to act out the patriarchal formula that’s been foisted upon them. By being herself, Lyons became a new lens through which to view the show.
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Until this latest season of RHONY, the fashion norms depicted on the Housewives franchise have been absurdly gendered. Case in point: Much of the fuss around season 14 was Lyons’ exceptional ability to wear pants. As Teich puts it: “No shade to Vogue, but I do think some of the other cast this season made pants look so good, including Erin with her ‘I’m real’ jeans looks, and Sai's denim set that made me audibly gasp at how good it was.” (Yes, she’s referring to Saint Sintra’s denim two-piece suit.) Teich goes on to note, though, that no one else but Lyons could show up to a red carpet event in denim and make it look so appropriate.
When I bring this pants phenomenon up with designer Martins, she responds, “There’s something contemporary about the fact that you have this woman who’s squarely female – she presents as female, she behaves as female, her gender and her sex are aligned – but she does have this slightly nonbinary element that she wears, like, jackets.” We both laugh and I add, “And pants!” “Yeah pants!” Martins exclaims. “A woman wearing pants? That’s insane!”
And yet, in the Housewives franchise, it’s not so far off. As Teich is careful to note, “The RHONY cast and women in reality shows seem to have to fit into a certain aesthetic: always a ton of makeup on skin that’s heavily filled with Botox and fillers, hair perfectly done (often with extensions), and fitted, sexy dresses. It’s refreshing this season to see this mold broken.” Although the other women do, of course, wear pants – it is the 21st century, after all – Lyons is the only one who consistently goes wide-legged, loose, and well-tailored.
Lyons is also, notably, one of the few queer characters in the entire history of the Housewives franchise. Alon Rivel, a spokesperson for Qwear Fashion, tells me that, “[Lyons] prompts meaningful conversations about gender identity, sexual orientation, and personal style…. Her inclusion helps pave the road for greater visibility of LGBTQ+ individuals in mainstream media.”
This is why Lyons showing up on RHONY matters: Unlike her contemporaries or even her predecessors, Lyons wasn’t bound by trends or traditional notions of how a woman should act or look. By virtue of the strength of her own brand, her queerness, and her situation within the more rarefied fashion circles, Lyons was perfectly situated to disrupt the Housewives’ universe.
“I can’t remember seeing more androgynous or less femme fashion on reality TV,” says Treich of Lyons’ addition to the show, which struck me as an odd sort of privilege in the realm of reality television. When I ask Rivel about whether Lyons’ legacy had anything to do with this “privilege,” he says: “Her influence within the fashion sphere allows her to challenge conventional fashion norms and gender expectations. Her legacy as a trendsetter and style icon provides her with the platform to express herself authentically.”
What would authenticity look like, I wonder, for the other women? Who would they be if they didn’t need relevance? If, like Lyons, they were “relevance”?
I’m inclined to say that Lyons’ decision to join RHONY, for all its likely benefits to her brand and her own projects, is still perhaps one of the most selfless decisions in the remarkably selfish world of reality television. She told The New York Times she “liked the idea of bringing some queerness to a largely straight franchise.” By intentionally placing herself in a situation that she was clearly discomfited by, while also using the platform to discuss her queerness and rare genetic disorder, she ushered vulnerability into a largely superficial, scripted space.
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Back in the Hamptons episode, after the wives confronted Lyons about her (many) pairs of jeans, they forced her to don Hassan’s tight-fitting dress. She re-entered in the floor-length black dress to their ecstatic shrieks of praise. In her talkback, as a montage of images of younger, more femme Lyons flashed across the screen, Lyons said this was how she used to dress when she was trying to attract a man. The comment reflected an almost insurmountable divide between her and the others: an expanded notion of sexuality. For Lyons, there are many ways to be a sexy woman, and not all of them involve dresses or form-fitting clothing. But that doesn’t mean she won’t play the game, be it in a snug dress in the Hamptons or as a cast member of RHONY.
Earlier this year, on The View, Lyons recalled one of the reasons (related to her disorder) that she went into fashion: “Because I wanted to look better. I was constantly trying to find ways to fit in.” But fitting in for Lyons has meant something entirely different than it has for her castmates. As a queer female fashion leader in the ’90s and early 2000s hiding a visible genetic disorder, Lyons’ experience has not paralleled that of the cisgender, hetero women of RHONY, who have, as Lyons pointed out in episode 8, “perfect skin” and who have largely adhered to traditional feminine norms. “I think Jenna Lyons is a catalyst for a different audience to enter into this world,” Martins, who admittedly had never seen RHONY before, reflects. “I admire her and would watch the show to learn more about her.”
Between Martins and myself, that’s at least two new RHONY viewers. Yet, even as Lyons helps Bravo access a previously inaccessible viewership, it’s to the chagrin of many Housewives die-hards who feel the new season lacks authenticity between the cast members, losing its distinctly NYC vibe. Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, it seems the Housewives franchise, like many other industries right now, is experiencing growing pains as it struggles to adjust to a less binary world.
