Fashion Week Plans Spoiled for Prep-School Fauxionistas
Every season, wannabes crash Fashion Week shows and parties. But few are as brazen as the daughter of a Vermont gubernatorial candidate and her BFF, who allegedly hacked into a fashion PR company's database. (I kind of admire their moxie!)
Remy Renzullo and Becca Shumlin—daughter of Vermont State Senate President Peter Shumlin (a Democrat), who's now running for governor—are seniors at the Putney School, a hippie-ish boarding school in Vermont where students work on the school's farm. The school motto is "intellectual engagement, creative play, progressive learning for a sustainable future" and for a mere $44,000 per year ($28,700 for commuters) students get an education that includes "livestock care, sugaring and fire wood processing."
So employees at BPCM—a fashion PR firm that puts on shows for Alexander Wang, Preen, and Erin Fetherston, among others—were somewhat confused to receive this email recently:
Hi [redacted],
This is Remy Renzullo, requesting an invitation for Alexandre Herchcovitch's Fall/Winter 2010 show. I work as a freelance stylist, currently working with the future first lady, Deborah Shumlin, of Vermont for the campaign trail and hopefully elected office. More information can be found here: http://www.shumlinforgovernor.com. In addition I have been signed on to contribute to a new fashion magazine, FUTURE. I would love to have seats or standing if available for myself and Rebecca Shumlin, the magazine's editor-in-chief and daughter of the future governor and, myself. Please let me know if this will be possible.
Thanks so much for your time,
Remy Renzullo
Then, our source says, things got weirder. "We were going through the guest lists of some of our tightest shows and saw that both Remy and Becca Shumlin were on ALL of the lists and no one knew how they got there. We googled them and found Rebecca's twitter [now locked] claiming how excited she was to receive invitations to Alexander Wang, Preen, Cushnie et Ochs and Erin Fetherston shows (all which we produce). Turns out the lists were being modified by someone in Vermont (hmmm....). We called Remy and he confirmed that they had HACKED into our system to add himself and Rebecca."
I called Remy and asked him for his side of the story, and he told me, "I'm not going to comment on that right now, but thank you for putting in the call."
But Remy and Becca have crashed Fashion Week before; the photo above was taken in the tents in Bryant Park in September, during the Spring 2010 shows. And a Google search reveals that Remy's been designing clothes for years—he claims that Vogue contributor and socialite Lauren Santo Domingo bought one of his dresses; on his website, he describes his Spring 2010 "collection" as inspired by "classic WASP icons" C. Z. Guest and Gloria Guinness. Becca appears to be a little more garden-variety Gossip Girl wannabe; she seems to spend most of her time modeling Remy's clothes, blogging about fashion (signing her posts "xoxo, Becs") and plotting how to get to New York again. In September—probably the same day they were caught by Getty's cameras—they were snapped tromping around the city by The Sartorialist. Most everyone agreed they were adorable (they are!), but that they looked "very young." Well, sure—they're in high school!
BPCM did not return a call. I did have the fleeting idea that maybe the whole thing was an elaborate ruse, but even that lent it another layer of tragicomic complexity. Update: We heard from an employee at BPCM who said that everyone at the company was "laughing about these two sort of silly kids all day yesterday." There's no way, she claims, that Remy and Becca could have gotten into the shows anyway: "We check our list so meticulously. I'm personally involved checking every single name on the list." She also denied our source's allegation that Remy had somehow hacked into the BPCM database. "It wasn't a hacking situation in any way shape or form. Somebody—probably an intern—tried to get them on a list, but we immediately saw it."
Becca will be a freshman at Eugene Lang this fall. Maybe The City will be looking for new cast members by then.
[Photo via Getty]