‘Screw buying a pair of Manolo Blahniks, I want to save a life’
If you didn’t have MTV in 2003, there’s a chance you missed out on this one season-er reality show. Rich Girls aired pre-Simple Life, pre-Laguna Beach and pre the surprisingly excellent Ashley Simpson Show. In fact, 11 years on, we’d almost forgotten that Rich Girls was even a thing until we spied star Ally Hilfiger at yesterday’s Tommy Hilfiger show at NYFW and it all came back in one beautifully nauseating wave of nostalgia.
The show focussed on two rather erm, well off girls living in New York. One was the previously mentioned Ally, the daughter of infamous American fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger. The other was Jamie Gleischer, daughter of some dude who created a luggage empire. The show followed the two girls over their last few months at school, the summer and Jamie’s first week at university.
Sadly now, Jamie and Ally are no longer friends. According to this article, both girls went to rehab and Ally is writing a book about having Lyme disease. Which is a disease caused by a deer tick that leaves you with tiredness, muscle pain, headache and neck stiffness.
Here’s why you need to rewatch it
**Made In Chelsea’s Cheska Hull was in it – as someone named Chloe. **
A brown-haired Cheska popped up in the last episode. She didn’t do a lot but served as Ally’s mate once Jamie went to college. Apparently she was ‘really into fashion’ and Ally liked British people so it was basically a match made in heaven. Notable lines from ‘Chloe’ include, ‘The worst thing is when you have to like, think.’ Yeah, thinking guys. Jeez. What a bummer.
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Ally and Jamie were philanthropists
From the time Jamie returned a leopard print Prada bag because she felt guilty it cost the exact same amount and the treatment her sick bulldog needed (pretty sure he died at some point in the series anyways) to the time the girls tried to figure out how to get matresses and therapists to Ethiopia via the medium of a charity quilt making party... they were nothing if not helpful to their fellow man.
They had great pearls of wisdom
Jamie and Ally were nothing if not sure of themselves. These guys were coining profound Instagram-worthy quotes seven years before the app was even a thing. The show was one aphorism after another; from the realisation that ‘people buy cargo pants in the Midwest, not to say, “Oh I could wear these with stilettos and a sexy top,” they buy them because they have a lot of pockets because they work in the fields and the need them,’ to Ally’s deep and meaningful, ‘What’s more important? A pair of stupid shows or a hangbag? Or a life?’
It taught you life wasn't easy just because you were rich
Whilst Jamie went off to college, Ally decided to take a year off (college apparently ‘creatively ruins your creativity’). Ally got really depressed in one episode about what she was going to do with her life (and the fact that there weren’t ingredients for burritos in the house). Luckily her dad brought her into Tommy Hilfiger to help design a line, where she found her calling telling trained designers how much she disliked their graphic T-shirts and the fabrics that they’d used. Awks.
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AND... you can get the whole freaking thing on YouTube
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Follow Jess on Twitter @jess_commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.