Jezebel: fashion senseless

Mandie Erickson In 'Page Six Magazine': The Female Dog Gets Her Day

Tracie — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:00:00 EST

Imagine our absolute delight when we saw that this week's Page Six Magazine had a big, juicy profile on our favorite evil "mentor" Mandie Erickson from The Fashionista Diaries. Oh, and it's a good one, too! The headline asks, "Is This the Most Hated Woman in New York?" Well, judging by the piece, writer Maureen Callahan sure as shit doesn't like her. She calls out Mandie for lying about her age (she says she's 29, but really she's 32), how bullshit it is that she criticizes her employees' personal style until they cry ("[Mandie] wears no makeup and an array of unremarkable black dresses"), and brings up Mandie's mysteriously-shriveled left hand "which seems to have suffered some kind of permanent injury, but when asked about it she replies, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"

But her gimpy hand isn't her only handicap. Mandie — once a victim of grade school bullying, who even had a pair of her Guess? jeans flushed down the toilet — "draws no through line between being bullied as a child and the almost reflexive tendency she has to belittle others—what she calls 'constructive criticism.'" Which, actually, we love because it makes it so much more fun and guiltless to hate her. Ooh, and Jezebel got a shout out in the piece, too!

Her tendency to grimace, sneer and eye-roll led to many unappealing facial expressions freee-ramed on Web sites like Jezebel, whose editors dubbed her "C—t Face."

Seriously, it was our pleasure to take those screen grabs. And Christ, if Mandie Erickson isn't a cartoonishly evil. So you know what we had to do. Below are quotes straight from the horse's mouth.

But our favorite quote of the whole damn thing came from Mandie's Kabbalah teacher Ruth Rosenberg, who didn't watch the show. "I don't think Mandie is that [way]. And if she is, she shouldn't be."

Mandie Erickson Designs Clothes But Doesn't Want Us To Know About It

Tracie — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:00:00 EST

Remember Mandie Erickson, the PR mentor/reality show villain/cunt face from The Fashionista Diaries? Well, apparently her talents are not limited to being horrible at interpersonal communication while working in public relations and making others feel bad about themselves as a way to mask her own insecurity. She also designs clothes! We're probably like the only people in the world obsessed with her, so we were so pissed at ourselves for not knowing about this earlier. Howevs, keeping her clothing line a secret was all part of her master plan. In an interview with Grandlife, she said:

Only a few people know about it. I'm really embarrassed when I'm with someone wearing a dress, and everyone knows where it's from. All of a sudden with fashion, you can go to H&M, and fashion savvy people hone in on the same pieces.

Wow, people must be beating down her door to hire her as a publicist with that unique "don't get the word out there" strategy she has. After the jump, photos of her line.

Honestly, while these pieces aren't genius or particularly inspiring, they aren't bad at all. The line, called Sweet Robin, ranges from $200 - $400 an item and is available at Scoop, Barney's and shopbop, where they also sell, gasp!, Juicy Couture. We guess she's friends with Chloë Sevigny, because there are some pieces named after her, and according to Mandie's designer bio on shopbob, she designed the clothes with her friends in mind:

As owner of Seventh House PR, Mandie Erickson requires a wardrobe that's both versatile and chic. She began Sweet Robin with the desire to dress herself and her friends in clothing that stands up to the latest high-end trends but doesn't break the bank.

The best though is this comment she made in her Grandlife interview, that really encapsulates everything we love to hate about her, backhanded compliment and all:

Everyone thinks my friends are perfect. But every girl has something she doesn't like about her body.

Hmm...we wonder if she's going to sell right-hand gloves only next.

A LITTLE BIRD CALLED "ROBIN" [Grandlife]

Mandie "Cunt Face" Erickson Didn't Always Talk Like That

Tracie — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:00:00 EDT

How psyched are you for tonight's episode of Fashionista Diaries? The New York Times ran Ginia Bellafante's review of the show today that included this gem

When writing about fashion for this newspaper some years ago, I had occasional dealings with [Mandie] Erickson. Though always efficient and pleasant, she stood out in my memory because she once speculated that the impact of a designer's show would be "devastational."

Ginia takes a shot at Cunt Face's intelligence/education:

I couldn't watch "The Fashionista Diaries" without envisioning Ms. Erickson in a different kind of reality show, one, say, in which she had to compete with a dozen graduates from Swarthmore and Yale for an internship at Random House or Bear Stearns.

And while we totally get where she's coming from, we actually have the inside scoop on CF's educational background and fashion accent (faccent?) from someone who knew her back in the day...

From a very reliable source:

[Mandie] went to Rudolph Steiner High School, which is a tiny school (like 10 kids per grade) on the Upper East Side for gifted and artsy (and rich) kids. I don't remember her having that awful "melk" accent/Patty-and-Selma voice combo though. That must have been cultivated over many years.

We're going to be discussing tonight's episode here tomorrow, natch.

Can a Girl From Queens Catch the Glamour Bug? [The New York Times]