Extra Extra: The Bachelor stylist, Cary Fetman

Here is this week’s final reveal: an interview with reality TV series’ The Bachelor’s stylist, Cary Fetman. Cary is responsible for dressing the featured Bachelor or Bachelorette of the series, and then the top two finishers in the final episode. Take a look into the life of fashion and TV’s top! *we started the call and got cut off so there are two parts and two sets of audio

Part I

Maggie McGregor: Hey! Is this Cary?!

Cary Fetman: Hi! How are you doing?

MM: I’m doing great.

CF: You really, you really did keep trying. I give it to you! I give you credit!

MM: [laughs] You’re either going to think I’m crazy or dedicated.

CF: No, I actually appreciate it. I like people to keep going, because I usually have good intentions and terrible follow through.

MM: No that is fine! So I just want to ask you about your process, but I thought I’d start out asking you: you help people find love on The Bachelor. How does that feel?

CF: Oh it’s amazing. It’s an amazing thing each season to watch somebody not believe that is going to happen, and it’s not going to happen to them because it really never has happened to them in the past, and they feel like it’s not a possibility and then all of a sudden, to watch them go through this process and change. When you’re with them everyday, morning and evening to change their clothes, you basically…we see you at your best, we see you at your worst, to be able to live through it and watch them go from doubting or hoping to then all the sudden getting that feeling of “I’m starting to do this, but am I making a mistake? Am I falling into the same rut that I always fall in or is this time different? And it’s so cool to be a part of it. How could you not? It’s like watching your brother fall in love.

MM: And you’ve been doing the show for a long time.

CF: I’ve been doing it like seventeen years.

MM: Seventeen years? Oh my gosh. So is this one of your favorite jobs of your career?

CF: You know it’s so hard to say that. I loved it enough to stop doing all my other…  I’ve had three different lives: I’ve both owned my own store and then dealt only with celebrities on red carpet things, I’ve gone through Julia Louis-Dreyfus having two kids, to Sarah Jessica to the Academy Awards to Lisa Kudrow during the Friends years so it’s hard to say that one is better than the other. They’re just so completely different. But this I get to see the world. I get to live through watching someone experience that falling in love. There’s just so many different things that happen with this show compared to when you’re dressing someone for a red carpet. To knowing for months… into taking one gown to walk down the red carpet is pretty exciting, too.

MM: That brings me to the question, where is your favorite place that you’ve travelled to with The Bachelor? Can you hear me? You’re breaking up a little bit…

[The call broke up!  Continue to Part II!]

Part II

MM: This is good! I’m getting you in action! You were talking about the travel. That you’ve travelled to so many amazing places.

CF: That’s one of the major perks. I think for other people they think, “My God, you’re constantly on a plane,” or, “ You’re constantly leaving. You’re never home. When do you see your friends? When do you do this?” And for me, I think it’s one of the major factors in what I love. Listen, you get to travel around the world. You get to see a different place every week. And see it through a person’s eyes who are in love. And seeing it at the best hotels where the Tourism Bureau wants to really show you a great time and really show off their country. We’ve basically also, become almost like a travel show.

MM: I love watching it for the travel! I’m an avid viewer. Where do you like to shop? I know you probably get so many samples from designers, but where do you shop fast fashion?

CF: You know it’s a typical thing that almost every stylist does. There’s so many different outfits. I think for a girl we go through 146 outfits and for a guy it’s like a 130 something and that’s now not including the fact that, we were just going through, that’s what we were doing now, picking out some lingerie, the idea that now we have even added where the next day, where it used to be, okay, the person left and she was able to be left alone, off camera for a little while.

Even that changed last season, so it’s even more clothes. about trying to remember, “oh, I need you need to be wearing something when he’s leaving the next morning whether you had a good night or whether you didn’t have a good night, you still have to be on camera. Because of the amount and stuff, I shop wherever I see something I like. Of course we do the basics. We do the malls, like the Bloomingdale’s. We also do Beverly Hills. We do Neiman’s, Saks, Barney’s. We do online. We do in the store. There’s so much stuff that you have to get.

Literally, when the first fitting happens, there’s probably 45 racks of clothes. four full racks of just gowns and you start off with so much because you’re just getting a chance to first really meet the person also. There’s a difference. This is not like somebody who I have worked with in years past, where I know before I even bring it to them, my regular clients what they are going to say, what they are not going to like. “This is gonna show my leg too much. This is gonna hug my tush too close.” You’re starting fresh with a whole new person. And, they’re not actors. They’re people. They are people who are searching to fall in love. And they have an image of what they feel pretty in. It has nothing whatsoever to do with you and you have to try, and see when they are looking in the mirror, what they’re seeing. Whatever they’re seeing, you have to see too. Because it doesn’t matter how beautiful you tell them they look. If they don’t feel it, they’re not going to feel it.

MM: You have to give them the confidence.

CF: I think that was the one lesson that I took from Oprah, Oprah and I when I first began, before I even knew that this was a career, I used to dress Oprah every morning when she was in Chicago. She would come into my store and I would say to her, “How do you know what works?” And I remember, never thinking that this would one day be my career, but I remember her saying to me that day, “If I ain’t pretty in that mirror, I ain’t going to be pretty on front of that camera.” If I am not pretty in front of that mirror, I’m not going to be pretty in front of that camera. If I don’t feel pretty when I look at myself in that mirror, I’m not going to feel pretty when I see myself on camera. And I have taken that as a life lesson. It does not matter what I think, it really is what they’re feeling.

MM: I’m picking up now the midwestern in your voice. Is that where you’re from?

CF: Yes.

MM: So, you had a boutique in Chicago?

CF: It started as a men’s clothing store. When Oprah came to town and she would come in and we became friends and she would come in and I would start dressing her and all of a sudden these ladies would keep coming in and they were trying to understand how was it that Oprah was shopping with me but when they would come in I’d say we don’t really have women’s clothes like that and so the more she talked about being “Cary-tized” the more I ended up having to change and start becoming a woman’s store, also.

MM: That’s so great. “Cary-tized.” I’m going to make sure that type that in the typed version of this. Do you have a preferred spelling of Cary-tized?

CF: No, I don’t. I haven’t thought about it in many, many, many years.

MM: Oh my God, that’s hilarious.

CF: It’s funny that it just came out. You brought me back to Chicago for a second.

MM: That’s so funny. So, wow, I didn’t know about Oprah. I had read about you, I had read your interviews but I didn’t know that you had worked with Oprah. That’s so cool.

CF: Oprah wasn’t Oprah. Back then she was Oprah Winfrey. She wasn’t Oprah yet. She was new to Chicago from Baltimore and she too was just getting to know the city, and getting to know friends, and people she enjoyed, and so she and I just kind of hit it off. So it was pre, “Omg. This is Oprah,” people screaming down the street. Chicago was never that. We’d go for dinner and walk down the street people would say, “Hi,” and wave but never the hysteria of what it is now for her to go someplace.

MM: I’d imagine what’s made you so successful as a stylist is that you really have that knack for taking any body, because she’s said before she feels she’s hard to dress and you can tell she feels attractive, whatever you do under the clothes, over the clothes, she feels good.

CF: And you know what? I think that’s the key for everybody, though. Yes, there are trade secrets that you could kind of do for each different body and you grow to recognize what works and what doesn’t work. And when something isn’t working, what maybe could be done to it, like a nip here, or a let out right there, or bring a pleat in, or you know, bring a pleat over to cover something that you’re not liking or lower the back because you have a really pretty back, or you’ve got great shoulders. Those are the things that as a stylist that you do because you recognize what are the best assets are on a person but at the same time you also then get with just the fact of you will learn that especially after doing it for a long time that it’s so not about you, it really is just about how they feel when they’re in it.

MM: Like you said, they are regular people, so when you’re on set, when you’re dressing them, what is your emergency go-to? Is it Spanx? Is it fashion tape? What do you have to have on you? the entire kit?

CF: When you’re working with a size 0 or 2 girl, and 23 or 26 years old, not that there aren’t people who feel more secure with it … trust me I’ve had women who are on camera who still even though they’re a size 2 insisted on wearing Spanx. But it’s just for your own comfort and knowing with the lights and the camera and that can change and pick up things that you don’t want to be picked up. But it’s also, it’s different, no matter who we are no matter what our body type is, no matter how thin no matter how fat, there’s something about each one of us and makes us uncomfortable about our body or the way we look in something and the trick is to not necessarily to embrace it although at some point I will look at you and go, “You’re crazy. Now you’re just seeing things that are not there!” But the other side of me is, “Listen, I hear you. I get it. I’m not here to force you into something. I’m here to make you happy. I’m facilitating bringing you clothes that you don’t get a chance to do.” Maybe we do certain polish to it. Maybe we do a certain alteration that you wouldn’t know how to do yourself, but we give you a little extra waxing, the simonizing at end of the car wash. But the truth is everything else is you. You know how you carry it. It’s how you walk. It’s how confident you feel and all of those things.

MM: So when you bonded like that with contestants throughout the whole season, how do you let them go?

CF: I don’t. Rachel still comes and sleeps in my bed. JoJo if she’s in town, it’s drinks. Andi, all these years later still stays at my house and it becomes, like, when more than one of them are in town, it becomes like a whole fight over who’s staying. It’s a blast. I truly, I think that’s part of what I love so much about this and I’m still holding on to clients of mine from 20 years ago. Up until Joan Rivers died, I talked to her at least three times a week. You can’t love somebody that much, I’m not telling you every person becomes that person in your life, some more, some less, but you can’t just at the end of it walk away and not want to know how their life is, and how they are, and checking in, and calling for their birthday, and calling for a holiday. You don’t just let go, and that’s the beauty. I’m too old for the social media side of this, good with going on Instagram and all those kind of things. I’ve been kind of forced into doing it. But if anybody kind of follows me, they know that I suck at it. And they know that I go for two weeks to hear nothing from me and then one night on a Monday I’m like spitting out the last two weeks of information. The fact that I have a follower is amazing. I can go anywhere from 65,000 down to 30, just because I haven’t posted in 9 months and then all of a sudden we are in the middle of the season and I’m going, “Oh my God! All these people are starting to follow.” But it’s not my thing. I’m much more of a texter. I am a person who, when I am just sitting there I just needs to text and go, “Do you miss the old man? Were you thinking about me today?” And that’s pretty much how I maintain my relationships with them.

MM: I’m so happy for a JoJo! I just loved watching her relationship evolve. She was someone who I was so happy to see fall in love.

CF: And now Rachel’s getting married. Becca is really wanting to. I mean the number we the number of kids we have coming out of it. this summer We are doing Krystal and Goose’s wedding. Never in a million years… during this summer show it seems to be that that’s the show where everybody does fall in love and get married. But it’s amazing same odds as everything not every relationship is going to work out. But the numbers have really all of a sudden there are so many of them who are now pregnant. We just had a 15-year Union. I think it comes out in two or three weeks (editor’s note: it premiered May 6th) and we had already started [Hannah’s] season and I flew home to do the show. When you start a new season, you’re already on the road and the idea of going back and having to do a show in LA when you’re already out there, and I was like, “Oh s***. I don’t feel like flying home for the day.” And all of the sudden, I walked in and I was like, “Oh my God. I forgot what it felt like to be surrounded by that much love. It was so much fun. Fifteen years of people you have been involved with, and touched, and watched go through things, even the ones who had a bad breakup, or had something, you’re getting to see them now with their new husbands and baby and things like that and so it just carries on and you’re looking and going, “Where’s the time gone by? How have I not talked to you in 2 years or 3 years?” You pick up exactly where you left off.

MM: That’s amazing. It seems like your job is time well spent. What keeps you going on set? What is your Starbucks order?

CF: The beauty is, and I know this is going to make everybody jealous, but I get to dress you in the morning, and come back and dress you in the evening and I don’t have to be with you on a set. Because they’re on a date. The less people the happier everybody is. Because this really is, we’re not doing like a TV show where you have, you’re on set and stuff like that. I think I’d go crazy if I had to sit and re-tie a bow every ten minutes for a different take, or for a different camera angle. I would shoot myself. This is the perfect job for me. I get to see the world. No matter where we are, in any part of the world. Somehow, even when we are not meaning to, we bump into each other (the contestants and camera crew). You’re like, “Oh God. Did I just see a camera? Go by” Sure enough. You’re like, “Really? why did you pick over here? Pick up your drink and let’s go.” That’s why I said, it’s the perfect life and that’s why with each one of these reincarnations of what I’ve done, I thought the same thing. Just to put a button on your original question, how do you pick which is your favorite, you don’t. You have a blast with each one of them. Each one has been so different. I couldn’t tell you I have a favorite. That’s like asking me if I have a favorite one of the people. They’re all like my children.

MM: So as a way to close what is a final thing to say to Bachelor Nation, who is going to read this on my blog? As a final message.

CF: I say, “Thank you, every last one of you, the ones that hate what I do, the ones who love what I do, the ones who maybe have an extra glass of wine at night and critique everything that I have ever done, right down to her nail polish, which I have nothing to do with! Or ask me each week what her nail polish is and I look at it and go, “Do I look in any part of my description that that’s my part of my job?!” I thank every one of them for being so invested, and being such huge fans and taking such an important part of what we do and also for keeping us on our toes as to whether we’re doing good or not. It’s really easy to get complacent when you’ve done it for a couple of years. That stupid Instagram thing, with everybody in Bachelor Nation telling me what I’m doing wrong. Trust me. It keeps me on my toes! They’re the ones who tell me every season, “That dress looks like what you did last season.” Okay, leave me alone! It does not. I’m seeing it in person. You’re seeing it on camera. Maybe now that you mention it, it might look a little like that. But leave me alone! There are only so many dresses that go around. I don’t pick the dress they do.