'Running in Heels' Aims for Documentary Quality on Style Network

by Terri Potratz | February 24, 2009 at 10:42 am

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The Style Network will begin airing a new one-hour reality TV series on Sunday, March 1 which revolves around 3 interns working at Marie Claire magazine. Editor-in-chief Joanna Coles hopes that Running in Heels will be more documentary-style and less like a traditional reality program, as she wants to deliver an honest portrayal of what it's like to work in the fashion industry.

The interns are Samantha, Ashley and Talita and the three girls share a SoHo loft in order to inject a bit more drama into the show. Because Coles wanted to keep the format as true to life as possible, they abandoned the competition framework that we've seen in shows like the CW's "Stylista."

Marie Claire has been doing comparatively well in the slipping magazine industry - though ad sales are falling, percentage-wise they aren't doing as poorly as Vogue or In Style. Coles is hoping the show will help to re-build the Marie Claire brand - and found that in the process of filming, she also learned a lot about her staff and the inner workings of the magazine:

Branding aside, Ms. Coles says she found the show to be a useful management tool. “It’s very useful as a boss to have a reality crew come in to film your own staff because you discover all these things about them that you didn’t know,” she says, noting that she was surprised at the amount of crying that occurred among her staff. “People say extraordinary things to interns … things that I had no idea people said and sound to me completely ridiculous. I’ve talked to people and said, ‘You know, that’s really not appropriate, I’m surprised that you would say that and I’d expected more of you.’”

(The interns are supposedly told on their first day that there is “no speaking unless spoken to — these are people who are paid for their opinion. Your opinion is not valuable to them unless they’ve solicited it.”)

Coles also spoke of the difficulty in being miked and having a camera crew around on a continual basis:

“Very quickly, you forget that you’re miked,” she says. “The terrifying thing for us is, we have glass walls. So, I would not have a camera crew in my office but I’d still be miked and I’d be talking to someone and then I’d realize they were filming me from outside the office.”

The magazine is considering a sequel if the initial series is a success - but with one change: the staff, particularly Ms. Coles, will have hair and make-up done before scene takes!

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