On Bravo, Merch Is The Best Revenge

You have to seize the moment,” Lala Kent says with characteristic certainty. The Vanderpump Rules alum is telling me about one of the most successful ventures of her decade-long reality career: “Send it to Darrell!” Those words first entered Bravo lexicon in 2023 at the height of #Scandoval, the seismic cheating scandal that engulfed (then imploded) the VPR cast. Kent had posted a clip on her Instagram story, in which she ranted at her former co-star Rachel Leviss for sending her a legal notice directly rather than addressing it to her lawyer, Darrell Miller. The video ended with the now-iconic four-word phrase.

“I deleted it after seven minutes,” Kent says. “But all of the sudden, I saw other people selling their own merch, and they had spelled Darrell’s name wrong. So I called my merch team and I said, ‘This needs to be on my page in an hour! We have to do it.’ And they got it done.” At the time, Kent initially revealed that her “Darrell” merch brought in enough for her to put a down payment on a home. Now, that figure is even higher. “It happened so quickly. I mean, we had done in the high six figures overnight,” she remembers. “I don’t know how many units we sold, but I will say, we made in the seven-figure range.”

Kent’s success proves that merchandise can be a lucrative income stream for “Bravolebrities,” who have been known to launch their own podcasts, bars, candles, skin care, liquor, or whatever else they can come up with in hopes to top-up their per-episode rate. (And you better believe that the network is cashing in too with its own Shop by Bravo store.) But in the overall star-making machinery of reality television, merch plays a more ambiguous role — one whose impact can’t be equated in pure math. For the on-camera personalities, selling merch is about staying relevant, shoring up their legacies, and cementing themselves as all-stars. Their success on those fronts, of course, depends on the fans who are buying (or not) amid their own identity- and community-building rituals.

When I arrived at BravoCon in Las Vegas last month, I saw a winding line of such enthusiasts stretching from the convention center right back to the famous strip. Even amongst the chaos of Vegas, the “Bravoholics” were instantly clockable: Most were wearing clothing emblazoned with references and quotes, from the two besties in coordinated “The rumors” and “The nastiness” tees to podcaster Mandy Slutsker, who sported a “Sonja Morgan’s intern” tote bag.

“My favorite is when it’s something uber-specific,” explains writer and podcaster Danny Pellegrino. “I have a baby onesie for my son with the Lisa Rinna quote ‘We’ll never see Denise Richards again.’ It makes me laugh so much because it is a shared language.”

Buying merch is about being a part of a tribe — like those scenes in The Hunger Games when sponsors send gifts and aid to their favorite contender.

A lot of fans made their own catchphrase-emblazoned clothing or sourced pieces from the thriving unofficial market on Etsy. Though Bravo stars don’t make money there — “I need a cut!” Erika Jayne joked to me — being seen as popular is its own reward. Take former Real Housewives of New York City star Dorinda Medley: She isn’t currently on a show, but her central place in the Bravo lexicon has given her real staying power. I lost count of how many iterations of “CLIP!” and “Not well, bitch!” or tributes to “Blue Stone Manor” — her New England home that hosted some of the show’s most deranged fall-outs — I saw over BravoCon weekend. (“I was just putting up my Christmas tree,” says Pellegrino, “and I have an ornament that says: ‘I made it nice!’”) With rumors of an “OG” RHONY reboot constantly swirling, this shared vernacular helps to keep someone like Medley in the conversation. In the Bravo fandom, your legacy is at least in part defined by your slogans.

Still, you can’t force it. “Dorinda’s quotes are tailor-made for T-shirts — and they’re amazing,” Watch What Crappens podcast co-host Ben Mandelker says. “Some people, they really try it, but their quotes just aren’t iconic enough.”

A quick tour of the BravoCon Bazaar offered no shortage of success stories. At Meredith Marks’ booth, employees tell me there’s huge interest in “I’m disengaging,” a signature phrase featured on all manner of trucker and baseball hats for sale. She also sold jewelry, her new board game, Rümors and Nastiness — which is like two truths and a lie with shot glasses — and tins of Meredith Marks Caviar, which a rep later told me she sells approximately 500 tins of monthly. (Perhaps no family on Bravo blurs the line between “merch” and “actual product” like the Marks family — see her son and Next Gen NYC star Brooks Marks’ signature track suits.)

Nearby, Marks’ Real Housewives of Salt Lake City co-star Angie Katsanevas is also selling clothing and accessories. Backstage, the pillar of the community herself tells me all about her merch, which includes caps, sweaters, and tees. “With the ‘high body count’ phrase, it’s now in the lexicon. It will forever live on,” she says. “But I’m also selling my hand-crafted sunglasses — made in Italy, designed by me. They’re made by people that make all the designer glasses in Italy.” Katsanevas compares her merch to the keepsakes of her youth. “It’s for the fans to be able to leave with a little piece of us — something they’ll have for the rest of their lives. I still have my Def Leppard concert T-shirts from, like, 35 years ago.”

“It has become an unspoken rule that if you’re on Bravo, you have to find some way to capitalize on your platform.”

Elsewhere in Vegas, I bump into Vicki Gunvalson’s right hand man, Christian Gray Snow. (He co-hosts their podcast, coordinates her media appearances, and signs off on her merch.) He tells me the surprise announcement that Gunvalson would be returning to The Real Housewives of Orange County for its 20th season has led to an unexpected rush for her “go to work!” bags and “little family van!” items. On the face of things, that sounds a tad bizarre — it’s like buying yourself a gift to celebrate someone else’s promotion. But the more I talked to fans, the more I got the sense that buying merch was akin to a small act of self-care — a way to extend the escapism of reality television a little longer.

I meet one pair of besties, Naomi and Claire, from Kansas, who by day are social workers in a children’s psychiatric hospital. On the first day, they already have bags stuffed with merch, including a black sweater from Bravo’s official merch stands, with “BRAVO BRAVO F*#KING BRAVO” bedazzled across the back and a $98 price tag. Claire’s husband is a federal employee, so money has been tight because of the recent government shutdown. “He actually just went back to work, which means I’ve been shouldering all the bills,” she explains. “He’s back to work now, and since he’s getting back pay, I get to use a fat chunk of that paycheck.”

“I’m usually pretty conscientious with my money,” Naomi chimes in, “but this weekend I’m not going to be, because it’s a treat.” Does she have a budget? “I wouldn’t go above, like, $1,000.”

Merch has been a part of Bravo since the early days of the Real Housewives. “If you look back to our first Real Housewives of New York reunion, Jill Zarin wore a ‘Team Jill’ shirt,” Andy Cohen tells me backstage. “She was merchandising from the moment she walked on the show. And she got a lot of flak from it — from me, as well as a lot of fans. But I have to say she was certainly on to something.”

Back then, it was considered tacky (at least for the high-status women of Housewives). Now, as reality stars have come to see their shows not as a career endgames, but as launch pads for other ventures. It’s simply considered good business sense. “All roads can be traced back to Bethenny Frankel here,” Mandelker explains. Since the acerbic, savvy New Yorker became the Housewives franchise’s biggest business success with her Skinnygirl empire, Mandelker says, “it has become an unspoken rule that if you’re on Bravo, whether you’re on Housewives or not, you have to find some way to capitalize on your platform.”

Even if you’re not exactly making Send It to Darrell money, merch can bolster your audience by effectively rallying the troops. In the midst of #Scandoval, Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney released a series of tees — featuring some mic-drop clapbacks to Tom Sandoval — quickly making around $200,000, which became seed money for their L.A. sandwich shop, Something About Her. (According to court filings, they’ve made a reported $1.8 million more from SAH merch since then.) Ashley, a 34-year-old mortgage broker from Nevada I met at BravoCon, told me she bought several of them and sees her purchases as a form of “women supporting women” — similarly to how “Team Aniston” shirts outsold “Team Jolie” by 20 to 1 in the 2000s. “I actually have one of Lala’s ‘Send It to Darrell’ sweaters, too,” she says. “But I never wear it anymore because I hate how she treated Ariana and Katie.” The merch fans buy isn’t just about identifying as a Bravo fan, but being a part of a specific tribe rallying around their fave — not unlike those scenes in The Hunger Games when sponsors send gifts and aid to their favorite contender.

In case you’re wondering how Sandoval himself feels about #Scandoval becoming an all-out merch war: “They all just sort of leeched on to my misery and banked in on it,” he tells me. (At the time, Sandoval stocked up on less scandal-specific merch.) “It was frustrating. It was tough to get dog-piled like that, but you know what? They did what they did. I personally would have not done that, but me and them are different people.”

Good merch affords you the last word.

Not all merch is created equal. At BravoCon, I noticed a distinction between what people were wearing and what fans were actually buying. The outfits-of-the-day were often elaborate and occasion-specific — like the trio of women who dressed in costume (or was it fashion?) to recreate RHOSLC star Bronwyn Newport’s $15,000 YSL heart coat. But purchases that won the day tended to be more wearable, everyday pieces. “People aren’t necessarily going going to wear a T-shirt that says ‘You’re such a f*cking liar, Camille’ out in the world, right?” says Mandelker. “Those types of designs might actually curb the amount of revenue you’re going to get from it, because you can only wear them in certain places.”

Sutton Stracke’s merch is designed to be the antidote to throwaway apparel. It’s part of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star’s circular fashion line, where items are re-purposed instead of being sent to landfill. Her pieces actually look like they’ve been designed by someone, and feel premium by comparison (an eco-shirt at BravoCon went for $125). Much of Stracke’s merch features her signature quote — “Name ’em!” — which people come up to her and quote “every day,” she says. “I had no idea that it would go viral. It’s very rare that a tag like that can be attached to you. Very rare — and so I embrace it.”

By and large, Bravolebs didn’t want to share specific sales figures, but Stacke’s business partner told me over email that “SuttonBrands.com” sold approximately 1,000 pieces of merch during BravoCon weekend — with the cheapest item being a $50 cap, that would mean at least a $50,000 gross — and that they’ve sold about 1,500 “Name ’em” pieces online this year. Based on a $65 average item cost, that's close to a $100,000 haul. (Probably less than her dry-cleaning bill, but not far off from, say, what newer Housewives make per season.)

The funny thing about “Name ’em” is that the scene that inspired it is not particularly flattering to Stracke; she comes across in the moment as, well, a little unhinged. But these merchable sayings end up totally eclipsing who was “right” or “wrong” in any given fight. No one cares what Dorinda was actually mad about when she said “CLIP!” or whether it was mean of Kim Richards to return the bunny to Lisa Rinna or if people really were doing coke in that bathroom. Good merch affords you the last word.

At BravoCon, a long-running beef was finally quashed at the RHOSLC panel, when Whitney Rose suggested that she and co-star Meredith Marks — who had clashed over their dueling lines of bath bombs — collaborate on one together. “We love each other’s bath bombs now, we’re in a bath bomb collab!” declared Marks, as fans cheered on the peace deal. Who says you can’t make up without making a few dollars, too? Conflict, resolution — it’s all just another opportunity to sell, baby, sell.