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Fashionistas founder Heidi Dillon's next stop: reality television

You might recognize the name or her face. Or have even contributed to her cause. If Heidi Dillon has her way now, you'll soon be watching her on TV.

07:38 PM CDT on Sunday, August 29, 2010

BY JASON SHEELER / Dallas Morning News

Merging onto a Los Angeles freeway, she's just another sunglassed blonde in a black SUV. Heidi Dillon – Fashionistas founder and Muay Thai kick-boxer, foul-mouthed socialite and Bible-church Christian – lunges onto the bottlenecked 405, sucker punching the Range Rover's accelerator the same way she smacked the Dallas social order when she arrived 16 years ago.

Dillon's latest incarnation is Heidi of Hollywood, and she's networking the hell out of this town to get her reality show green-lighted. (Working title: Dallasocracy.) Malibu-ensconced for the month of August, the 57-year-old is maxing out her agent, producers, trainer and age-management doctor like so many credit cards. "Everyone out here wants to be on television," Dillon explains with industry-vet brio as we zoom north on Pacific Coast Highway toward her cliffside rental in "the 'bu." Lego-like developments Dillon terms "$3 million shacks" whip past on the left, as the jagged and sun-baked hills slam by on the right. As we emerge from an ivy-covered tunnel, Santa Monica Bay pans across the windshield like a movie's opening credits. Dillon lowers her window without taking her eyes off the winding five lanes, her alarmingly unlined face unmoved by either the salty air or the view. She points out Moonshadows restaurant, scene of Mel Gibson's first public descent. "We go there, and I get Mel-drunk," she says, flooring it past a Prius and a Hummer. The self-described "bad-ass socialite" is late for the gym.

How Dillon got from Minnesota to Malibu is pretty made-for-TV. Here's the way she tells it: Adopted at one month of age, Heidi Joan Raugland had a middle-class suburban Minneapolis childhood with Knoll furniture and clothes made from Yves Saint Laurent patterns, in a household she describes as "Mad Men with brandy dry Manhattans." Dillon never so much as raised her voice to her strict civil-engineer dad and stay-at-home mom – a quality not shared by her own 13-year-old son, Dallas, who she says isn't the least bit afraid to tell her to "[expletive] off."

"I was the black sheep of my family," says Dillon, whose sole sibling, a brother (also adopted), is now a mortician living just a couple of blocks from their parents. "I kind of did everything in junior high you aren't supposed to do," she adds, turning out of the cliffside compound's steep driveway after a costume change into James Perse cotton gym clothes. "I've always suffered from depression, but I got off the meds. When I was 14, I tried to commit suicide – look, there's Cher's house – and was hospitalized for six months."

Dillon's memory is fuzzy on why but clear on how. "I tried slitting my wrists, but it hurt." Instead she stockpiled her father's sleeping pills, knocking back a fistful with a glass of water. After an in-patient stay at Minnesota's Golden Valley Health Center, she finished high school and entered a local secretarial school. (She says mom and dad didn't deem her college material.)

Marriage to Thomas Schneeweis, a University of Iowa Ph.D. candidate in finance, took her to Iowa City, where she studied fine art. In 1977, Schneeweis joined the University of Massachusetts business faculty, and the couple moved to Amherst. Soon after their arrival, a fellow professor, married New Yorker Bill Dillon, dropped by to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Schneeweis. And "that was that."

"Small-town academic life is pretty wild," says Dillon, all been-there, done-that. "I met him and fell in love. What are you going to do?" What she did: Moved in with Bill, got an MFA at U-Mass, moved to New York for five years, then to Columbia, S.C., for Bill's new faculty post. Somewhere in there – Bill and Heidi both say they can't remember when – they married. When Bill was offered a position at Southern Methodist University in 1994, the same year he co-founded a lucrative marketing research consultancy, Heidi's quiet, just-a-kickboxing-wife-of-a-professor phase abruptly came to a close.

"Things have changed so much in 16 years," Dillon says with an exhale, sitting back in a beige silk barrel chair in the third-story living room of her Dallas home a few days before leaving for Malibu. You can almost see the sizzle reel playing in her head: Head-to-toe Chanel outfits. Clipped hike up the social hill. Construction of the glam Frank Welch-designed house overlooking Turtle Creek (2010 tax appraisal value, $1.7 million). Birth of son Dallas, soon-to-be-star of four-color party pics and the family's Psalm-heralding Christmas cards.

Dillon might have burned some people, too, but only, she insists, because she always, always speaks her mind. Many who knew her in the early years declined to comment. Forty Five Ten co-owner Brian Bolke, then co-owner of floral shop Avant Garden, remembers her with both amusement and fondness: "Heidi was playing a different character at that time. It was hard not to trust someone with a bow in her hair."

Several notable Dallas women, including Margot Perot and Linda Ivy, were very kind to her when she arrived, Dillon says, suggesting Judy Wasserman as a friend I could call.

"Let me see how I can phrase this," Wasserman says carefully, when asked about Dillon back in the day. "She was much nicer when she got here. Absolutely, from the very beginning, she was very single-minded about cultivating relationships with people who could help her. I didn't get it. I do now. I loved Heidi, but she moved on."

And up. In 1998, Dillon snatched the Bulgari ring – co-chairmanship (with Cynthia Mitchell) of the Dallas Museum of Art Beaux Arts Ball. By 2002, she had chaired two more major events – the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society luncheon, where she ruffled hairdos by switching the partnership from Stanley Korshak to Neiman Marcus, and the Salvation Army Fashion Show & Luncheon, where she found yet another way to shake things up.

"Let's just say she put a drag queen on stage singing a Marlene Dietrich tune," remembers PaperCity co-editor Rob Brinkley, then a staff writer for The Dallas Morning News. "I nicknamed her that day the Anti-Socialite."

What Dillon remembers most are the slack-jawed faces of the Salvation Army officials, front row in their starched blue uniforms. She savors the memory with a throaty laugh. "Then everybody was talking."

Dillon "met a lot of nice people" on the charity circuit. "And, you know, that's the way you meet people in Dallas." She says dealing with the "power trips and agendas was miserable," though.

"I learned about climbing the social ladder.

I learned all the kinds of things I never knew before. And I wasn't particularly interested in those things. I didn't have an agenda.

I'm an artist."

The T hangs in the air with a tuh.

Wasserman says Dillon most certainly did have an agenda. "She wanted to be important." Regardless, Dillon's got an agenda now. Actually, two.

No. 1. To take the Fashionistas, her six-year-old nonprofit with its loosely defined goal of "celebrating the art form that is fashion," national. First stops: Austin, Oklahoma City, Rockwall.

No. 2. To apply whatever polarizing power, celebrity and Twitter followers she's amassed over the past 16 years toward becoming a "Bravo-lebrity." Seriously.

She's certainly had some Real Housewives-worthy splashes and clashes. A battle with Stanley Korshak owner Crawford Brock. Feeling slighted by executives at Neiman Marcus. Vowing never to look at fedora-crowned lawyer John Reoch again. A feud with PinkMemo.com founder and "arch enemy" Maxine Trowbridge. ("Oh, that's hilarious!" Trowbridge laughs. "So much drama.") Telling who knows how many people to "[expletive] off."

Her personal star map really begins, though, with the creation of the Fashionistas. And God told her to do it.

If you enjoy voyeuristic photos in magazines like FD Luxe, or find rich blondes in designer clothing fascinating, you've no doubt come across Dillon and her 501(c)3. While the 7,000-plus member group is well known for its imperious name and frothy parties for Acuras and blind Russian designers, here's what most people still wonder:

What's the point?

The Fashionistas had an earnest start. Following that drag-queen moment with the Salvation Army, Dillon went into a bit of seclusion. "I wasn't going to any parties. I was just sick of everything. But, I mean, I didn't stop shopping or getting skin treatments."

After dropping off son Dallas at Greenhill School one morning in 2004, Dillon went home for a nap. On her kitchen counter was an invitation to a Dallas Historical Society fashion collection tea at Neiman Marcus. "I really hate teas. I was lying in bed, and you know what? Literally, a voice spoke to me – I believe it was God – and said, "Get up and go." I happened to have a new Chanel suit, so I put it on." She got in her Mercedes S450 and headed downtown.

Mingling at the tea, she learned the DHS collection of antique and historical costumes was housed in a rented storage unit. "That's when I was inspired," she says, voice now a whisper. "I can't explain it. I thought, 'I should do something about that.' "

Unto Heidi, the Fashionistas was born.

That first year, Dillon says, she brought in 150 to 200 new members for the DHS, selling $200 memberships right out of her Birkin. She says the entire amount benefited the DHS, though when asked the historical society's mission, she's cloudy. "I don't know," she snaps. "They're based in Fair Park."

In any case, "it was a hot ticket. I started getting publicity immediately." Two events in her home – one for jewelry designer Robert Lee Morris, the other a Chanel resort show – each raised $10,000. (DHS executive director Jack Bunning, who wasn't with the organization at the time, says he's unable to verify dollar amounts raised by the Fashionistas.)

But – spoiler alert – the relationship with DHS began to sour. "You know, my personality. The society. Not a good fit. I heard rumblings, there were people on the board who were like, 'Oh, who is she? What's she doing? We don't like this.' And I was like, 'Oh, really? I just brought you $50,000. What's not to like?' "

The fit issue wasn't a result of Dillon's bulging ego, she insists. In any case, she traded up, turning her sights from Fair Park to Denton and the pedigreed Texas Fashion Collection, founded in 1938 by Stanley and Edward Marcus in honor of their aunt, Carrie Marcus Neiman, and donated to the University of North Texas (then North Texas State University) in 1972. The collection, now numbering more than 15,000 pieces, fills a campus warehouse where white-gloved students examine the world-class collection of Givenchys, Norells and Galanoses. In January 2006, Dillon invited curator Myra Walker to the Zodiac Room for lunch.

"Myra and I had big dreams. Big dreams," Dillon remembers almost wistfully. First and foremost was a permanent, climate- controlled home for the vast fashion collection. An upstairs space at UNT's downtown Dallas building was targeted for the archive, with a space for exhibitions downstairs. The buzz from the burgeoning style militia was, "Let's make Dallas a fashion capital!"

"We did have big dreams," Walker agrees, describing the original plan as a research facility á la the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It wasn't long before conflicts arose. Walker says the key issue was who would control the estimated $30,000 raised by the Fashionistas for the UNT project.

Dillon has a different take. "The dean of the College of Visual Arts and Design [Robert Milnes] wasn't, uh – he saw it was very glamorous, what we were doing, and wanted to get in on it. He wanted to be the star."

For Walker and members of Dillon's board (which, full disclosure, for several months in 2006 included this reporter, not then employed by The Dallas Morning News), there was little doubt who was the star. Dillon was a reliable presence at parties, openings and the bar at Nick & Sam's, often with her "favorite A-gays." Her new look was sleek, black and architectural. She lost the hair bows and switched to smaller breast implants. "Fashion isn't boobs," Dillon says, adding that she nagged her husband "for a while to get smaller boobs, but he said, 'I don't want you flat.' " She looks down at her black workout tank with a tender frown and murmurs to herself, "I still think they're too big."

Urgent e-mails dispatched from Fashionistas World Headquarters (at the time, Dillon's kitchen) included donation pleas and come-ons for memberships of $200, $1,500 and $5,000 – all to fund the proposed fashion museum. Dillon says four-figure members didn't get anything special. "People just gave it to me because they were being nice." (Memberships now go for $75 and $200, but the difference between levels is still "nothing. You just give me $200 because you like me.")

Dillon and Walker were a very visible Odd Couple on the Dallas social scene, the flashy, buff and blown-out socialite and the understated and bookish university professor at her hem lending a sober air of credibility. Their shining moments came with the opening of the 500-square-foot Fashion on Main in September 2006, officiated by Mayor Laura Miller, and a comprehensive 2007 Balenciaga exhibit at SMU's Meadows Museum, which even earned a mention in The New Yorker. Before long, around the time Dillon was charging $100 to clink flutes with Vogue's Hamish Bowles, the romance began to fray.

"It was like a breakup," Walker acknowledges with sadness, adding that Dillon never hesitated to write a check. "We were a great team. But when you work with a university and get into public-private partnerships, you have to be on the same page. Heidi wants to follow her own rules, and that's not going to work for me. Because I have a job, and I want to keep my job."

Dillon began to feel as if UNT were treating her as an adversary. She summoned Milnes to her home and sat him down in the silk barrel chair. "I just said to him, 'Where do you see the Fashionistas fitting into this whole thing?' He said, 'We really see the Fashionistas just being an auxiliary group.' ... He basically told us: 'We want you to keep having your little parties and keep getting the press, but we'll take care of everything else. We don't really see you as running the show.' "

Milnes says that wasn't the conversation from where he was sitting, and claims there was never any association to break up: "What they wanted to do is formally join in a partnership, but the Texas Fashion Collection belongs to the university." The Fashionistas simply provided support for exhibitions and installations, he explains. "I'm sorry if that's a diminutive role for her. That was not the intent. What is the intent is that the collection needs to be run by the university."

Asked how much money Dillon raised for the museum, Milnes says he doesn't know offhand. Regardless, "we have to be accountable. ... People can give us money, but how it's raised and then what percentage of it actually goes to operate the charity needs to be transparent."

Whoever broke up with whom, there was definitely Veuve Clicquot when the board of the Fashionistas decided to go solo. "We used to drink a lot at board meetings." Dillon yawns wildly with a throat-clearing hiss. "It's been really hard," she says, staring distractedly over my shoulder at the far wall's massive Alex Katz painting. "It's really easy when you can say, 'Oh, I benefit the Historical Society' or,

'Oh, I benefit UNT.' People understand that. So then this thing happened where everyone was like, 'She's just trying to promote herself.' Why would I, why, why would I do that? "

Dillon is interviewing herself at this point, getting visibly agitated with her own line of questions, furiously rubbing her nose and spraying her words across the low-slung coffee table. "There's lots of other things I could do. I could hang out with Ana Pettus more, and get on her plane and go shopping. Which would, frankly, be much more fun than struggling every day to make this organization go."

Since parting with UNT, the Fashionistas has continued to throw parties, partnering with stores such as Barneys New York on special events and also launching a lecture series. FD Luxe co-sponsored talks with Tiffany & Co. design director emeritus John Loring, Fashion Institute of Technology museum curator Valerie Steele and designer Yeohlee Teng.

As for the larger goal? "We're raising money for scholarships," Dillon says with palpable largesse. "That's the main thing."

According to Dillon, the focus on scholarships began this year, but tax documents filed with the IRS list one of the organization's primary exempt purposes as "providing scholarships for local fashion design students" starting in 2008. That year, the Fashionistas awarded $3,000 in grants and scholarships on total revenue of $97,073. In 2009, revenue totaled $81,236, and $500 was given out. Where did all that money go? IRS 990s from 2006 to 2009 list rent, salaries (Dillon says she takes no salary), fees paid to independent contractors, special events, networking- travel costs, website and branding.

Dillon says $2,000 in scholarship money has already been handed to El Centro, the Art Institute and UNT this year, for the schools to distribute at will. She would like the number to be larger, she says, but fundraisers have been disappointments – recessions hurt fashionistas, too – and the group moved into new offices at South Side on Lamar, where two contract employees blog, recruit members and plan events. "Bill's Christmas present to me was $20,000 so we could move into the new offices," Dillon says, adding, "I would have rather had a couple of Birkins."

She's found new ways to raise money, including charging for mentions in the group's blog and Dillon's monthly "Heidi's World" e-mail.

"Yeah, it's just a different way to raise money for nonprofit," she says. Corporate memberships to the Fashionistas start at $500 and climb to $5,000, for which buyers receive, among other perks, a "full company or promotional article" on the Fashionistas blog, monthly mentions on five Facebook pages and Twitter and the attendance of the Fashionistas at an event. "We have this huge database. ... We have a huge Facebook presence. So we're taking on these little PR clients and kind of becoming a mini People's Rev."

That would be People's Revolution, the New York-based public relations company owned by Kelly Cutrone, reality star (The Hills, The City, Kell on Earth) and author (If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You). The caustic, trash-talking Cutrone seems to represent the paradigm of Dillon's Hollywood-Heidi ideals.

And here we are. Celebrity.

Dillon says she'd never considered a reality show until she was contacted three years ago by a producer making cold calls for a proposed The Real Housewives of Dallas. "They came over, filmed me, filmed some other people. I thought, 'Oh, fun.' " Six months later, another production company, Allison Grodner Productions (Big Brother), came calling after finding the Fashionistas' website. The producers came to Dallas and filmed a few mock board meetings with real Champagne. Style Network became interested, and the series' focus shifted from Dillon and company to the Fashionistas' junior varsity, called F2s. Dallas Divas & Daughters debuted in October 2009.

"You think it's going to be one way, and it's another. This is the way it works," Dillon reassures herself, uncrossing her legs and excusing herself to go "pick this huge booger out of my nose."

Dillon's contract with Grodner paid her $4,000 for services to the show, which included casting. She fought for a producer credit, but instead she got only "Special Thanks," a line she asked to be removed after watching the first episode.

"It was a train wreck. Garbage. Well, it was fascinating, and I couldn't peel my eyes off it. Style Network shows are usually low-budget. But I was so star struck by all of it and was duped. ... And I wasn't comfortable with reality at the time." The eight-episode show followed mothers and daughters from polo matches to awkward pool parties and was widely panned. Some Dallas bloggers blamed Dillon for everything from the content to the cast. (The Style Network has not revealed plans for a second season.)

In July 2009, Dillon retreated to Malibu for the summer, where the three-house compound with unobstructed Pacific views isn't a bad place to get comfortable with reality. "Why should all those Divas & Daughters people have all the fun? I should have my own [expletive] show. Especially since all those people looked so ridiculous."

Once again moved by the Big Designer upstairs, she got out of bed and called Bag Snob blogger Tina Craig for Cutrone's number. "God told me to do it. I'm no [expletive] about that. I'm a Bible- thumping Christian. Literally, I was moved by the spirit to do that. ... When you hear The Voice, you should really listen. I texted Kelly and said, 'Hey, can I have your agent's number?' "

Dillon says she not only got the number, Cutrone hooked her up with Cameron Kadison, regarded as one of the best reality-show agents in Hollywood. Dillon spent the rest of the summer meeting with more than 20 production companies, finally settling on another Kadison client, MCfilmworks.

The husband-wife team of Sheri Maroufkhani and Michael McNamara works on an industrial corner of Culver City, across from the Keep Out gates of the Celia Lou Apartments. I'm tagging along in late July 2010 with Dillon, who's here to go over casting details for her proposed Dallas-based "female-ensemble docu-reality series." Neither Dillon nor MCfilmworks will confirm the rumor it's The Real Housewives of Dallas , but they do say filming begins in Dallas in late September.

Dillon just knows she's made for reality television. That all her Bravo-ready bravado, her F-bombs, her constant contradictions, her insulting tweets, her exhausting and cyclical battles with the whosits and whatsits of Dallas have been leading to This Moment. So certain is she of her destiny she sometimes shifts from future tense to present when talking about the life of a reality star.

As she walks into the offices, rhinestoned flip-flops her only Texas tell, her comportment changes noticeably.

She's now the eager ingénue, flapping into the meeting with a gift for Maroufkhani, MC's vice president of development It's a $130 bugle-beaded clutch that unfolds to reveal Dillon's fave F-word splashed across the lining in 4-inch caps. Maroufkhani politely wows.

Dillon and the producers discuss casting ideas, which do not include those other telegenic Dallas socialites with agents and ambition: Kimberly Schlegel Whitman and Angie Barrett. "Look, Kim is boring for television," Dillon says. "She's nice, but who wants that? It's really difficult to find people who will scream and holler and carry on. And Angie is dying to do it. She's been coming out here for years to get a show. But there's only one grand old diva on this show, and that would be me." ("She's right, there's only room for one," agrees Barrett, who's negotiating her own network deal.)

Guess what – Dillon has vulnerabilities. "She's actually a softie," says superblogger and friend Craig. "She's an old-fashioned girl from Minnesota, and she doesn't want you to see that. She's always giving things to people. Her generosity doesn't only extend to people who can give things to her. Her housekeeper in Malibu has the best room in the house."

Sometimes the vulnerability does appear, if only briefly. "When your parents die, who's ever going to be proud of you like that?" Dillon wonders. This is followed by a clutch-popping shift: "I get a lot of attention just because of my personality, and that pisses people off. And another thing that pisses people off is that I have a beautiful family. Even my [expletive] dog is beautiful."

Like a baby with a hand grenade, she's desperate for nurture but unpredictably explosive. "I say what I want to say. I tell people to [expletive] off when I want. I'm an irritation in the flesh of Dallas society," she says proudly with a smile, on a high from the producers' meeting. "But you know what happens? You get attention."

There it is.

Settling back into a plush and legendary velvet banquette at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge, Dillon savors the moment with tuna tartare and a glass of pinot grigio. She likes life in LA and wonders if reality-show success might lead to a place here year-round. Maybe in Entertainment Weekly, too.

"No one hates me out here," she says, gazing around the room where Vincente Minnelli filmed The Bad and the Beautiful and skewered the Hollywood machine. She finds her light, having a rare reflective moment, and what might even be a twinge of regret for the bridges she's bombed.

"You know what? You probably shouldn't say what you think. Maybe people in Dallas have it right. Just call everyone 'precious' and 'darling' and say what you want behind their backs and don't let anybody know what you really think.

"Then [expletive] 'em up the [expletive]."

She finishes her glass of wine, swallowing hard. "Oh, wow, look, it's Flavor Flav," she says with curious gravitas, considering it's a rapper turned reality star with a white plastic wall clock swinging from his neck. "When he walked in, I thought he was selling beach jewelry. If I knew how to spell his name, I would tweet that."