Lisa Barlow Gets Her Bags

At home with the centerpiece of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City”, who says she buys her Louis Vuitton “in bulk.”

The night twinkled with bright stars and brand names. It was Fendi’s 2023 Resort show, held beneath the painted tiers of New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom, and auspiciously so; it was also the 25th anniversary of Fendi’s Baguette, the model of shoulder bag made famous by ’s Carrie Bradshaw decades earlier in what has become a plot point in the history of televised fashion. Storied houses didn’t typically lend their wares to TV shows, until a storied house like Fendi did. Decades later, the bag’s birthday was celebrated through collaborations with Marc Jacobs and Tiffany’s, the latter of which resulted in Bella Hadid appearing on the runway in a Tiffany-mint jumpsuit featuring cargo pockets affixed with Baguette clasps. Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays Carrie, sat front row. Down to her right sat Lisa Barlow.

Barlow, a New York native and the owner of a Utah-based events marketing firm, is also a voracious luxury consumer. She has personal shoppers in Los Angeles, and one in Milan. “I send her pictures of a mood I want,” Barlow told me recently. Her big-spender status is what earned her an invite to Fendi’s Resort show. But it was her more recent fame as a cast member on that elevated her status. Joanna Dubin, Fendi’s CEO, is a fan of the show, and invited Barlow to sit in the front. “She was telling me how she watches episodes on the plane when she goes to Italy,” Barlow said. (Dubin and Fendi did not respond to requests for comment.)At the show, she also met SJP, and Barlow introduced herself, voice pitching up, as “one of Andy’s girls!”“I told her, ‘You have the best body. I’ve always thought that, since watching you on ,’” she added. “And she was like, ‘Really, you think?’ So nice.’”When Barlow and I spoke over the phone, fans were suspended in the midst of season five’s -style luncheon at Mary Cosby’s—a string of hurled insults, misunderstood non-insults, and clip-in bangs. Recent seasons have documented one wife’s “chalet” stuffed with Kallax shelves of luxury handbags (season one) and her subsequent arrest by federal authorities for defrauding the elderly (season two); her innocence campaign souring into a guilty plea (season three); her former assistant joining the cast and admitting she helped tip off investigators (season four); and that assistant being revealed as an operator behind an anonymous gossip Instagram account that terrorized her castmates. Still, critics and fans alike are calling the current season the show’s best yet.The luncheon began to go off the rails right on schedule—before all of the guests had convened—with Cosby shading Barlow upon arrival for wearing a garment they both owned: the Fendi Baguette Tiffany-blue jumpsuit that Hadid had worn. In her confessional interview, Cosby accused Barlow of copying her look, a claim Barlow disputed. “I saw it before Mary even knew it existed,” she said.After the Fendi Resort show, Barlow asked Dubin if she could help her get her hands on it. And as luck would have it, the season four reunion, which was styled after the cast’s trip to Bermuda and required a sunset’s worth of jewel tones, would provide a perfect occasion to first wear it.

In order to compose a harmonious color palette of women’s fashion, a designated Bravo production person creates and sends a “schematic” to all Housewives, detailing the Pantone shades and general vibes of the reunion set. Their stylists then submit their looks for approval. According to Barlow, the Fendi jumpsuit passed with applause.Then, about four weeks before the reunion was set to be filmed, Cosby appeared in the jumpsuit—layered over a pound of necklaces and tucked into jewel-encrusted boots — opposite Andy Cohen on , where she haltingly explained why a 2003 heat wave that killed tens of thousands of Europeans also produced the most delicious vintage in the history of Dom Pérignon and perhaps winemaking. Even Ziwe, who happened to be the other guest, was stunned. The appearance went viral. Barlow silently nixed the jumpsuit.“I just showed up in what I wanted to wear,” she said; a chain-mail knit slip by Tom Ford and a whisper of a heeled sandal she bought at Saks the night before the reunion filmed. The jumpsuit episode had been annoying then and had proved enduring recently, and Barlow recalls the incident with her trademark myopic exasperation——cut with a detectable glee, because at least the whole thing facilitated Barlow’s absolute favorite activity on God’s green Earth, which is buying clothes for herself.“I love iconic pieces. I love thoughtful pieces,” Barlow said. “I shop with intention.”

Salt Lake City resembles a great big bowl, if not exactly a melting pot. The city sprawls out from the downtown spires of the Mormon Church, arching up into a rim of mountains and kissing its tangy lake. In the winter, this splendid landscape sometimes results in a weather phenomenon where heavy passing clouds pour into the bowl, trapping pollution close to the ground and choking out residents. “They call it the inversion,” Barlow said, explaining it to me apropros of nothing; the weather was reportedly gorgeous when we chatted. “They’ve been cloud seeding here since the ’70s.”Lisa, her husband, and their son reside in a chalet-ish manse toward the bowl’s southeastern rim; her elder son is currently serving out his Mormon mission in Bogotá, Colombia. Most of the Housewives are sprinkled throughout the greater city, and accordingly live in various proximities to Mormonism. There are ex-Mormons like Heather Gay, who spun the experience into a book series, and there are neo-Mormons like the Barlows, who proudly own and operate a beverage company that makes tequila and hard seltzers. For a city like Salt Lake that could not be accurately described as diverse—about 70 percent of residents are white, with nearly half belonging to the LDS church—its Housewives program displays a surprising breadth of religious expressions. Cosby, of the Fendi jumpsuit, leads a Pentecostal church, and season five’s centerpiece dramatic event happens to be an adult bat mitzvah.Each Housewives franchise is built on a cast of women, but thrives on the energy of a generational star—a NeNe, a Bethenny, a Teresa—who becomes central to the group’s dynamic. Salt Lake City’s gas giant is Barlow, who not only brought the original cast together for Bravo’s producers but functions as a kingmaker for aspiring castmates, who either challenge her and fail (Monica Garcia, Bad Angie), challenge her and ascend (Good Angie), or whose challenge is ongoing (Bronwyn Newport). Like all great housewives, Barlow could not apologize her way out of an open-air gazebo; like Carrie Bradshaw, we love her both for and despite this.If reality stars, but especially Housewives, have to perform on the razor’s edge between aspirational and accessible, Barlow’s balancing act has the practiced gestalt of a seasoned clown. One of her most entertaining moments this season came after she learned she’d have to endure a 47-minute flight in the agony of the main cabin; meanwhile she nutritionally subsists on fast food, Diet Cokes, and fun size Kit-Kats. Newport, a season five newcomer brought into the fold by Barlow, notably said that, of all her castmates, Barlow was the only one whose on-screen persona felt true to the person herself. The two ended the season on the outs. (Newport booked the main cabin ticket.)

Barlow’s main business, LUXE Marketing, specializes in brand activations around events like the Sundance Film Festival, but she’s also parlayed her fame into sponsorship deals. The multinational chain Wendy’s recently contracted Barlow’s fast food habit, and the season five premiere opened with a shot of the Barlows enjoying Wendy’s at their continental kitchen island; Barlow also flew to the company’s Ohio headquarters to taste test the chain’s 2025 menu. “Ohio is so cool,” she said. “I’m obsessed with Columbus.” An on-screen recommendation for a Kérastase hair serum, delivered shadily at the adult bat mitzvah, helped Barlow secure an Instagram partnership with the brand a few weeks later.She is also an active participant in Bravo’s own events economy, which not only includes the blockbuster BravoCon but other satellite events that occur throughout the year. At an event in London for Hayu, Bravo parent NBCUniversal’s international streamer, Barlow participated in an “actors on actors”-style conversation with a housewife of Potomac; later, in Miami, she spoke on a panel about not having a filter.Fans lob catchphrases at her all day, calling her Baby Gorgeous and reminding her to “go the distance.” Unlike actors, Housewives seem to delight in every interaction with the public. Barlow says it energizes her, to her occasional detriment—one night in Miami, she clocked around 45 minutes of sleep. She can sense when people want more from her, and what she denies her castmates she is happy to give to the public. Nearing the end of our appointed interview, when I thanked Barlow for her time and wished her a happy New Year, she worried we weren’t quite done yet: “Do you need anything else on my style?”

Filming for season five’s reunion fell smack dab between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and in one of her off-screen duties as a housewife, Barlow had to complete her holiday shopping early. First, she pulled a signature Barlow time-saving maneuver that involves flying to Las Vegas for the day. “In LA, they’re sold out of the sizes I need,” Barlow explained. “I can hit all the shops at Crystals, all the shops at Caesars, all the shops at the Wynn, have a great meal, and head home.” For close friends, Barlow imports Rosette cookies from New York and pairs them alongside Louis Vuitton coffee table books. (“I buy in bulk,” she said.) Her 14 year-old son, Henry, asked for a scooter and $5,000. (“He likes to have his own mode of transportation,” Barlow adds, pointing out that he and she are both Sagittarians.) He got a scooter, a Louis Vuitton backpack, and an outfit from Off-White. The younger Barlow has expressed concerns to his mother over the recent sale of the late Virgil Abloh’s label to the private equity firm Bluestar Alliance (“He hopes they don’t ruin the brand”), but remains a fan of its exaggerated silhouettes. Her husband of 21 years, the calm and slender John, was hoping for a new watch from Phillippe (“Am I saying that right?”)—but owing to a delay in its arrival, Barlow hopes it’ll make a lovely Valentine’s Day gift.

Then came one of her last work obligations for 2024: The reunion itself, a marathon production that typically spans 12 to 14 hours of filming and many more hours of preparation; Barlow likes to binge the season’s episodes leading up to the big day, effectively flashing her past social year before her eyes. The season drew to a close on January 15, and the first of three reunion episodes will begin airing next week.The image this season was not pretty. Barlow ended things on the outs with most of the other women, ensuring turbulent reunion conditions—and I’m not even including her inexplicable beef with Whitney Rose. When I asked Barlow who her friends were going into the reunion, she mentioned only Meredith Marks, which struck me as ominous. Still, even a grueling reunion can end in euphoric relief, like the kind you experience after vomiting. “If you don’t lie, it makes it easier because you can put yourself back in that place and roll off of your feelings and how you felt in that moment,” Barlow said. “It’s good to have your voice and to be able to use it.”As tradition dictates, Cohen released a photo of the reunion seating ahead of filming, which may as well be a ranking of the most relevant or embattled wives of the season. In “Bermuda,” Barlow was second chair, but this year she sits up front, to Cohen’s left. Her dress, she says, is schematic-approved and fashion-forward.“Fringe is always hot,” Barlow hinted, “but I feel like it is super hot now.”