Lauren Conrad: Reality TV as a Business Model

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Model: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Conrad: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; Movie: Everett Collection

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MTV also initiated a reverse product-placement scheme in which it offered clothes—similar to the styles Conrad wore on the show—for sale on its SeenON!MTV e-commerce site. That year the site produced $20 million for the network.

Conrad, who made $75,000 an episode, as first reported in In Touch Weekly, says she didn't get a penny of the ancillary revenue and left the show after the 2009 season. She says she also felt restricted by DiVello's decision to edit out the ways in which her rising stardom affected her life. And that, she says, "was a dealbreaker." As a result, her new series will function as a "weekly 30-minute commercial," she says, for the LC brand. To ensure this, Conrad is an executive producer, hoping to capitalize, as Stubblefield puts it, on "more potential upside."

She's also putting her own capital at risk. Conrad has invested "a large amount" in Paper Crown, she says, to retain complete creative control. "This is mine to lose," she says. "I've learned that when you are not your own boss, you always have to meet in the middle." As a designer, Conrad says, she's often reminded that Kohl's target customer exists in, as she puts it, the "broader market." When she was designing the Lauren Conrad Collection, "I didn't always have the final say," she admits, "because someone else was financing it." Perhaps as a result, The New Yorker referred to one of her collections as "sub-Old Navy."

Conrad describes Paper Crown, which launches this year, as "more upstairs" than her previous work. With pieces ranging from $65 to a $390 chiffon wrap dress, Conrad says she's trying to design "very chic, clean pieces that have good fit and good fabrics" to be sold at upscale boutiques. Will consumers shell out nearly $400 for a dress designed by a hopeful soon-to-be-erstwhile reality star? "I'm afraid of failure, always," says Conrad. "There's been many, many times I questioned myself." That said, given the strength of the LC brand, she hopes to see revenue from Paper Crown in about a year.

Conrad's longer-term goal, she says, is to create "my own business in replacement of the partnerships I have." It will be, she predicts, a retail fiefdom encompassing books, clothes, and beauty products. As she ticks them off, the young mogul pauses, having momentarily forgotten something. "Oh yeah," she says, "and a TV show." At least for now.

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