You know these ladies: They're Jeana, Tamra, Lauri, Vicki, and Gretchen—the famously blonde (with one stunning exception), bodaciously gorgeous Real Housewives of Orange County. We wondered: What if we took them out of their sunny, casual W Declension comfort zone and turned them into real housewives of, oh, say, New York City? And they, being as curious equally we were (not to mention fabulously expert sports), went along. O's dazzler director, Valerie Monroe, reports.

Transformation: From O.C. to NYC
Backstage: Meet the stars
Surprise! Val thought she was just there to report...

Information technology was going to be the makeover story of a lifetime, but I had no idea.

"Wouldn't information technology exist fun," said Adam Glassman, O's artistic director, "to restyle the Real Housewives of Orange Canton to look similar New Yorkers?"

"Orangish County?" I said. "Where'south that?"

A few weeks later, I was on a airplane to Fifty.A., reading the biographies of the v housewives who star in the striking Bravo bear witness. Adam was already at that place, having rounded up the women, forth with the vivid celebrity hairstylist Ken Paves, a mode stylist, a makeup artist, a set up designer, and a seamstress. The photograph studio was a beehive of activity past the fourth dimension I arrived: The housewives had alighted, i past one, from their cars; some fittings had started; and the place was buzzing with the kind of girlish excitement that ane might look from five women who were about to exist stripped of near every aesthetic convention they were accustomed to—and and so utterly fabricated over.

In the unlikely event yous, similar me, aren't acquainted with this particular Orangish County look, hither's a rundown:

1. Hair: blonde and long

2. Skin: very tan (ofttimes spray-tanned)

iii. Teeth: blindingly white

4. Lips: clearly total

5. Noses: pert

vi. Breasts: notably big

vii. Tummies: flat; hips: nonexistent

8. Nails: long, French-tipped, and square

9. Jewelry: big and frequently diamond

x. Clothes: mostly pastels, corals; formfitting and revealing

Of grade, you could find these elements in the urban Northeast, too, simply the warm, sunny Southern California climate seems to bring them all together in a style yous might call Extreme O.C.

By twenty-four hour period'south end, the 5 housewives would be modern-day Athenas, sprung from the caput of Adam, transformed from their homogeneous perfection to a metropolitan, slightly eccentric, chichi. See the makeovers.

Fashion editor: Sean Spellman. Pilus: Ken Paves for the Ken Paves Salon. Makeup: Heather Currie for Cloutier Agency. Set up pattern: Susan Anderson for the Rex Bureau. Manicure: Debbie Leavitt for Cloutier Bureau.