BEST OF MANHATTAN

Photo by Noah Stitelman

Jill Zarin at Zarin Fabrics

26 • Resident The Week Of October 21, 2008

 BEST OF MANHATTAN

W
By Heather Corcoran Zarin’s wild ride started with a message on her answering machine
hen she teeters your way in her giant gold platform after she was spotted on David Patrick Columbia’s society Web page,
heels, it’s obvious that this woman is not like you. New York Social Diary: “We are doing a reality show about glamor-
All the details — the freshly made-up glow, the pro- ous New York City moms. Would you be interested? Call, if you are.”
fessionally blown-out hair, the never-before-worn In the end, Zarin and four others — Countess LuAnn de Lesseps,
clothes, the diamonds as big as your fist — let you know that she is Bethenny Frankel, Ramona Singer and Alex McCord — were cho-
rich. Or famous. Or both. She sticks out a thin hand topped with a sen to be New York’s Real Housewives. Continued on page 29
boulder of a ring. “Hi, I’m Jill.”
Jill is Jill Zarin and on The Real Housewives of New York City she
plays the quick-witted queen bee of New York City’s society set. In
other words, she plays herself.
Real Housewives is Bravo’s voyeuristic view into the private lives
of wealthy New York women making their way among New York’s
sharks and social X-rays. It’s a moneyed drama starring real-life,
grown-up Gossip Girls, and Zarin is at the center of it all.
The “docu-soap” premiered last March. It isn’t exactly a reality
show; it’s more a heightened version of the lives of five New York
women and their families. “This is a docudrama, not a documen-
tary. The show we put together is meant to entertain you for an
hour,” Zarin explains on her official blog. It’s not the type of reality
show where contestants vie for cash or a record deal. And the cam-
eras aren’t always on. “Everything is time and place agreed. They’re
not going to follow me to the grocery store, where if it was the Real
World, they do. It’s 24-hour cameras on you, which I could never do.
I would never want to be exposed that way. I mean I’m still exposed,
but I control my exposure much more so,” says Zarin.
Today she’s decided to be filmed at Zarin Fabrics, amid the rich
damasks and brocades at the Lower East Side décor store she runs
with her husband, Bobby Zarin. Signs in the Grand Street display
windows advertise design tips from the Real Housewife herself. While
the crew sets up, she flips through Fashion Week coverage in the
(now-defunct) New York Sun with a publicist. “Does it have my name?”
she asks.
It seems impossible to feel comfortable with all the cameras
around, or maybe it takes some getting used to. According to Bob-
by, it’s hard work, all the preparation and the clothes, but it’s Jill’s
thing. “I’m on a need-to-know basis. I just find out an hour before,”
he says.
When the cameras start rolling, Zarin becomes effervescent. She
and her husband talk over each other in the way that couples that
are genuinely in love finish one another’s stories. She even jokes
with the photographer about having Botox. “I don’t even think
about [the camera crew], I don’t worry about where I’m standing
or what angle … that’s their job.” The show is on in 146 countries,
she says, “and if I thought that 10 million people were watching, Jill Zarin, daughter Ally Shapiro and husband Bobby Zarin celebrates the premiere
I’d freak out.” of The Real Housewives of New York City on March 3, 2008 at Touch in New York

Resident The Week Of October 21, 2008 • 27


Bravo Photo: Barbara Nitke
Queen of New York
Continued from page 27
Zarin is the sweetheart den mother of the crew, doling out advice
and making connections (“I’m a sharer,” she says. “I am; I do.”).
Her “character’s” storyline includes her teenage daughter Allyson,
her loveable husband Bobby, her wisecracking mother and bitchy
“gay husband” Bruce who tags along on shopping sprees. (Bobby’s
three kids from a previous marriage decided not to be on the show.)
Together Bobby and Jill run Zarin Fabrics, Bobby’s family business.
She keeps busy with other projects too,
like a line of healthy chocolates and an
advice column, Ask Jill. Nothing changes
Along with Zarin, the Housewives in-
clude Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, a for- since high school …
mer model with two kids and a perenni-
ally out-of-town husband she calls The it’s like adult Mean Girls.
Count. Bethenny Frankel, who’s not
exactly a “real housewife,” is a thirty-something natural foods chef
with a Wall Street boyfriend named Jason who just won’t propose
(and who lost his job for participating in the show). Frankel is no
stranger to reality TV; she was the runner up on Martha Stewart’s
version of The Apprentice.
Then there’s Ramona Singer, the brash blonde who runs a busi-
ness selling religious jewelry along with hunky husband Mario and
wise-beyond-her-teen-years daughter, Avery, who sometimes can’t
help but be embarrassed. A penchant for causing drama earned Ra-
BEST OF MANHATTAN
The girls get back together for “Reunion: Watch What Happens.” Left to right:
Alex McCord, Jill Zarin, host Andy Cohen, LuAnn de Lesseps, Ramona Singer and
Bethenny Frankel
mona the nickname “Rameana” and a tennis grudge match with Jill
in the Hamptons.
The newcomers to the scene are Alex McCord and her “Siamese-
twin” husband Simon van Kempen, who is by her side every precipi-
tous step up the social ladder. The McCord/van Kempen clan — Alex,
Simon and their two young boys, Francois and Johan — don’t live on
the Upper East Side with the rest of the girls, rather in Cobble Hill,
Brooklyn where the kids are taking French
lessons to prepare for kindergarten.
This past April, the season wrapped
after five months of filming and seven
rapid-fire episodes. The backstabbing,
judging and drama was evident on the
heated reunion show — van Kempen
was called a gay phony, Singer stormed
out over McCord’s nude photos and Zarin wore a rhinestone-stud-
ded T-shirt that proclaimed herself a member of “Team Jill” (part
of the line she sells on her Web site, jillzarin.com).
“Certainly there are things, here and there, that you can criticize,
but I feel it was very accurately portrayed, for all of us, good and
bad. And the fear was, could I really do a sophomore season and
come out okay? Because I think I came out okay season one,” she
says. “At first I said there’s no way I’m doing it. After I finished sea-
son one I said, ‘I’m done.’” Continued on page 31
Resident The Week Of October 21, 2008 • 29
 BEST OF MANHATTAN

Queen of New York

Continued from page 29

Despite her initial reservations, after some time off, she decided
it’d be fun to jump back in. In 2009, The Real Housewives of New York
City comes back for a second season of fashion shows, family stress
and dinner-party drama, though the date hasn’t been announced.
Plus, a sixth housewife joins the show: Kelly Killoren Bensimon, a
regular on the social pages with one of those multiple-hyphen career
titles that includes everything from model to mother to author. (A
casting notice for season two called for women “living or, at least,
aspiring to the Manhattan dream.”)
The girls from NYC aren’t the first to get the Bravo treatment; the
show is the second installment of the network’s addictive Real House-
wives franchise, which started in California’s ritzy Orange County.
Both Housewives have been such a hit that this season, Bravo’s cam-
era crews head to Atlanta and New Jersey for two more spin-offs.
But among each version of “reality” it’s the ladies of New York who
provide the glitziest hour of television.
Instead of McMansions, there is opening night at the Metro-
politan Opera. The New York Housewives have their own lives and
careers, and like any socials worth their salt, the New York gals are
Bravo Photo: Jay Sullivan

involved in charity. Zarin’s pet project is arthritis; her daughter and

stepson both suffer from different forms of the disease. On Oct. 21,
she hosted a charity event to benefit Creaky Joints, a foundation for
adolescents with arthritis.
For Zarin, it’s hard to compare the two shows. “It’s like apples
and oranges,” she riffs on the Big Apple vs. Orange County pun.
“What do we have in common? We’re moms, but the way we treat
our education and the way we handle our children — very, very
different, very different.” So different, in fact, that a fight between
the two crews ensued when they met for the first time at the Bravo
A-List Awards this June.
Zarin sums up the show in a sentence: “Nothing changes since
high school, and in a way it’s like adult Mean Girls.” For the cameras,
everything is larger-than-life, like when Zarin frantically shouts for
her assistant over a lost digital camera during a photo shoot. Sit-
ting in the Zarin Fabrics showroom, customers stopped, whispered
and stared. Some asked for directions in the store (she gracefully
obliged), some stopped to tell her how much they loved the show
and asked about her daughter, and others just gawked.
There is something genuinely likeable about Zarin. Maybe it’s
the fact that she’s in on it, that she gets that with the show comes
some fame and that she can use it to her advantage. She’s not in it
to make money and says she won’t cash in on a book deal until at
least season three or four. Instead, she wants to use the exposure for
publicity for the store and for her charitable causes.
“Of course it opens doors. I’m the first to say maybe I got 10
invitations a week last year, and now I get 25. There’s no question.
And the parties I get invited to are bigger and better. And I wanted
that, for whatever reason. My mother always said, ‘Jill, you always
wanted to be invited to the parties.’ Maybe because I was insecure
from high school, when I wasn’t [invited]. That’s my way of, you
know, whatever,” she says. “But at least I own it, and some people
don’t.”
The Real Housewives: Ramona Singer, Jill Zarin,
LuAnn de Lesseps, Bethenny Frankel and Alex McCord
Jill’s Picks
Jill Zarin on Manhattan’s finest …
… Shopping I do a lot of shopping at Bergdorf’s and Saks,
those are my two main department stores, because it’s easy
and they deliver to me and they pick up.
Love Dolce and Gabbana, I buy a lot there. Giuseppe Zanotti,
Christian Louboutin,YSL. Madison Avenue — pretty much ev-
eryone knows my name. Everyone knows your name, what
was that, Cheers? Everyone knows Jill Zarin’s name on Madi-
son Avenue. It’s true.
… Social Scene I’m always looking for the new hot restau-
rants. My husband’s a foodie. I’m a member of the Friars Club
so I hang out there a lot.
Lunch, I go to Nello, I go to Cipriani. Yesterday I was at Ama-
ranth. I love Le Bilboquet on 63rd. See, it doesn’t even have a
name outside. It has a green awning, hard to get their phone
number, don’t really take reservations, but it’s okay, very Eu-
ropean crowd and the best French fries. I love Le Cirque’s
hamburgers, little burgers.
I went to dinner last night at Home, which just reopened in
the West Village on Cornelia Street. It’s nothing from the out-
side, it’s just a small, thin, narrow restaurant, but in the back it
has a backyard with a tree and the lamps so you’re not cold.
And sitting outside with all the townhouses around you, and
you smell the air and the fire burning, and where else? New
York City.

Resident The Week Of October 21, 2008 • 31