During her short stint on Stylista, Cologne often looked like the lone sane person in a crowd full of crazies.  She only lasted three weeks as an assistant at Elle magazine, despite being in the winning teams for the first two weeks in a row.

Cologne spoke to BuddyTV today and gave us the scoop on the interpersonal dynamics among the contestants on the show.  She shared with us her observations on Kate and Megan, probably two of the most unique personalities in the house.  She is also a budding entrepreneur, having just launched her own online clothing company over the summer.

This is Debbie at BuddyTV, and I've got Cologne on the phone from the CW's Stylista. Hey, Cologne. So I wanted to start by asking you, why did you want to be on Stylista in the first place?

I decided to go and audition for Stylista because I had always wanted to work at a high fashion magazine. And I was a student at the time, at UC Berkeley, and I had some extra time in my senior year, so I went ahead and auditioned for the show. I wrote my thesis on fashion, and fashion is ultimately the industry I'd like to work in, so I really just wanted to learn more about it. I was curious about what it would be like to work at a high fashion magazine, especially in New York City.


When you got on the show, what were you expecting? Was it what you expected?

Reality TV is sort of like a thing of its own, and I didn't exactly know what to expect, but a lot of it was kind of what I was expecting. I think they casted the show very well, and everyone was sort of their own character. It was interesting to get to know such a diverse group of individuals. As far as the magazine went, everything was thrown at me, and I had never worked at a magazine before like that. No one really knew what they were doing. I didn't know that they were going to expect us to do so many things without giving us very much instruction, such as the layouts and the computer program. Everything was above all of our heads. But it was a learning experience, everything was. It was fun.


About last night's episode, can you talk about what happened at the birthday party? Why did you decide to go with the other mother-daughter couple? What was going through your mind at the time?

You know, Katie made a really huge scene in front of all the moms. I think everyone was a little bit embarrassed about it. So I thought I'd be the bigger person and just go with another mother-daughter couple because it wasn't that big of a deal at the time, like, which one to pick. It was more about accurately making a layout about the trends that they were wearing. So at the time, I was like, “This is absolutely ridiculous that we were fighting about this in front of all of these adults, and we really need to just go with somebody else.” I still stick with that decision. I think it was definitely the most professional thing to do.


At elimination, you were put in the position to defend your actions. If you were given the chance to defend yourself again, would you say anything more to about it?

Maybe, I guess I would have. I actually did defend myself in the boardroom, but they didn't show it on TV for some reason. At the time, if they weren't going to see that Kate was inappropriate and that that was the most professional, I mean, I thought I was pretty clear. The ladies who worked at Elle came up to me afterwards and said, “Thank you so much for stepping in and going with the other couple.” Everyone was telling me “Thank you” afterwards at the birthday party. So, I mean, I thought that it was pretty clear that it was the right decision. It wasn't that I was backing down and giving in to be the nice one that people were saying. It was literally the right thing to do at the time.


I guess maybe it's an understatement to say that there's a lot of negativity towards Kate in the house. Do you think it's warranted? From an insider's perspective, can you give us your take on that?

To be honest, outside of the show, as a person, I think Katie's a really nice girl. She's a character. She's eccentric and over-the-top, but that's just who she is. But as far as a teammate, working with her in a professional environment, that's not something that I'd ever really want to do. She was very difficult to work with. It came across as she was doing things and trying to help and we were ignoring her, but it was really more, she just wasn't helping at all and wasn't actually doing anything to get our team ready for the challenge. It was impossible to work with her. It was just really hard. I think that was kind of clear, and I think that's just how everyone feels was hard. You just don't want to be on a team with her, I guess.


Yeah, I agree with what you said earlier about how the casting on the show is really great. And there are so many other people with such strong personalities, like Megan and Ashlie have this thing going. So I guess I was wondering, apart from Kate, what were the other dynamics in the house that you observed?

Everyone has a strong personality on that show. From my perspective, Megan was very off the charts. I didn't even know how to read her. Like, is she for real, or is she a paid actress? I've never seen anyone act this way before.


What would she do that made you think that?

She was talking back to the Elle professionals and, I don't even know, she was just very, I don't know what the word would be, but her intentions were very unclear. She was always just scheming in her head. Everything she said, you couldn't trust her. It was like, everything had some sort of deep plan. She wanted to bring you down secretly. I wasn't there to bring other people down. I was just there to show what I could do. Hers was completely different. She just had completely different intentions there.


I'm looking forward to seeing all of that.

Yeah, it was bizarre. Honestly, I had no idea that people would do this. You clearly are meant for reality TV if this is your plan.


So what are you doing now? Are you still in fashion? Are you trying to work for another magazine? What's going on?

You know, I started my own clothing company over the summer. It's online. It's called OhDeCologne.com. I've been working on that a lot, but also, I moved to New York City, and looking for a job, still. I'm still looking to do something. I want to be in fashion, absolutely. I just graduated from Berkeley this year. I got my degree in business, so I'm looking to do something in fashion and business, possibly PR. But I have my own company behind me, and it just recently debuted online, so I'm pretty excited about that.

-Interview conducted by Debbie Chang
(Image courtesy of the CW)