Back Row with Amy Odell

Latest Episodes:

The Swan: Inside Reality TV's Most Brutal Makeover Show (with Director Erin Lee Carr) Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

*SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription.* Referenced in this episode:

Facelift confessions, part 1: https://www.backrow.net/p/facelift-confessions-part-1-the-brutal-realities-of-getting-work-done

Facelift confessions, part 2: https://www.backrow.net/p/facelift-confessions-part-2-expect-an-emotional-toll In 2004, Fox turned plastic surgery into primetime entertainment. The Swan reality show gave contestants about $200,000 worth of surgery each, put them on crash diets, banned mirrors for three months, and then put them in a beauty pageant. Nine million people watched. Erin Lee Carr, director of 'Mommy Dead and Dearest' and 'Britney vs Spears,' goes back to the women 20 years later in her hit Hulu documentary, The Swan: Behind the Mirror — and tells Amy what the documentary couldn't. CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

04:45 Getting the Swans to talk again

10:00 "I almost died for reality television"

19:30 How much choice did they have? "1%"

22:45 Starvation diets and spoonfuls of peanut butter

26:00 The nude photos Dr. Haworth kept

28:50 The $5 million contract

36:50 "Would you do it again?"

40:00 A classic Anna Wintour story

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Fashion Month Awards, Spring 2027: Dior's Slump, Chanelmania Continues, and Galliano Fallout (with Dana Thomas) [TEASER] Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for the FULL Fashion Month Awards podcast and get more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Save three months on an annual subscription. For pod ONLY, sign up in Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/back-row-with-amy-odell/id1843400835) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0wpDOgcuWKjpH9WxklNqI4). The spring 2027 shows just wrapped in Paris, a year after the "Great Reset" brought new creative directors to Chanel, Dior, and many more. Amy is joined by Dana Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of Deluxe, Gods and Kings and Fashionopolis, to hand out Fashion Month Awards. They get into John Galliano's PR rehab after the canceled Met show, who's having the biggest sophomore slump, and more.

The full episode for Premium subscribers includes awards for Best Runway Stunt and Best Overall, plus analysis of John Galliano's weak Zara launch and Virginie Viard's explosive book. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 04:30 Biggest sophomore slump 10:45 Best show nobody talked about

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Stop Impulse Buying: How Fashion Month Keeps You Broke (with Mrs. Dow Jones) Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

Mrs. Dow Jones (Haley Sacks) on how to stop impulse buying and why fashion month keeps you broke. Part One of two. For part two — about Birkins and fashion's play to woo the wealthiest shoppers — get a Premium subscription to Back Row: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Save three months on an annual subscription. Or sign up in Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/back-row-with-amy-odell/id1843400835) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0wpDOgcuWKjpH9WxklNqI4) Haley Sacks, aka @MrsDowJones, joins Amy to break down how fashion month keeps us stuck in a cycle of broke. Every season the same trend gets planted on the runway, in your feed, and on influencers, and within two weeks a cheaper version shows up at Zara. Haley talks about how to stop impulse buying, why luxury goods are so expensive, and what it was like to grow up in one of the world's wealthiest neighborhoods. CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

01:30 How fashion month keeps us in a cycle of broke

04:00 From the runway to Zara in two weeks

08:00 Buy fewer, better things

10:00 How to stop impulse buying

16:00 The luxury pyramid and the $690 keychain

20:00 Is any luxury actually worth it?

22:00 Hunting a sold-out clutch with an AI agent

25:30 Haley's years as an Upper East Side nanny 📺 SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row Newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe 📷 Follow Back Row on Instagram: @backrow

📷 Follow Amy on Instagram: @instamyodell Follow Haley Sacks

📷 Follow Haley on Instagram: @mrsdowjones

📖 Buy Haley's book, Future Rich Person: https://link.amazon/B07xqeKEx🎙️

🎙️Follow Haley's Financial Tea podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/financial-tea-with-mrs-dow-jones/id1860939850

🎙️ Follow Haley's Financial Tea podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/58anKIbkGzd5MkI3v0BjY2

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Meghan Markle Deep Dive, Part One: From Struggling Actress to Meeting Harry Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

Harry and Meghan are back in the UK, six years after leaving the royal family. In the first part of Back Row's deep dive into Meghan Markle, Amy and former Us Weekly and Hello! editor Justin Ravitz — who has interviewed Prince Harry and worked with the couple's team — trace Meghan's story from her Los Angeles childhood to the night she met Harry.

Part two is available to Back Row Premium subscribers.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

09:00 Meghan's Los Angeles childhood

12:30 Age 11: taking on Procter & Gamble

16:15 Briefcase No. 24 on Deal or No Deal

22:45 Landing Suits

30:00 The Tig blog and Meghan's Goop dream

35:30 Social climbing and Soho House

43:30 Humanitarian ambitions and meeting Harry

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Buy The Palace Papers by Tina Brown: https://link.amazon/B02EAsx6X

Follow Back Row: @backrow · Follow Amy: @instamyodell · Follow Justin: @jaydubargh

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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Fur Is Out of Fashion. Is Wool Next? Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

PJ Smith, director of fashion policy for Humane World for Animals (formerly the Humane Society), has spent almost 20 years getting companies from Gucci to Net-a-Porter to go fur-free.

Now that most top fashion brands have sworn off fur, is wool the next big target for animal welfare activists? PJ talks about why, thanks to LVMH, the fur fight isn't quite over, how he got brands to change their mind about fur, and what's next.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:30 Why fur-free NYFW is historic

08:00 How Humane World actually changes brands' minds

18:30 Fur farming down 85% — the numbers

22:30 PETA vs. H&M: the wool protests

25:30 Is wool humane? Mulesing explained

46:30 Exotic skins: the next target

52:00 PJ's biggest lesson after 20 years

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Follow Back Row: @backrow · Follow Amy: @instamyodell

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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Fashionphile's Founder on How to Spot a Superfake Birkin (with Sarah Davis) Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

Superfakes have never been better and counterfeiters have never been smarter — so how can consumers buy secondhand luxury with confidence?

Sarah Davis started Fashionphile on eBay in 1999, while she was in law school. Resale has exploded since: Her company now employs more than 350 people and authenticates roughly 1,500 luxury bags a day. Sarah reveals how she turned luxury authentication into an almost CIA-like operation, what gives away a fake Birkin bag, and how a $35,000 machine can tell if a Cartier Love bracelet is real or not.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 Law school, eBay, and the Fashionphile origin story

15:00 A real Chanel, a fake one — can you tell?

21:00 Fake bags bought at real stores

23:30 "Your dupe isn't cute"

26:30 The $75 fee that killed the counterfeits

29:30 The $35,000 machine that catches fake Birkins

44:30 Where resale goes next

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Follow Back Row: @backrow · Follow Amy: @instamyodell · Follow Sarah: @justsarahdavis · Shop Fashionphile: @fashionphile

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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The Trend Forecaster Who Coined "Vibe Shift" on What Comes Next (with Sean Monahan) Sep 14, 2026

Show notes

*SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription.* Trend forecaster Sean Monahan coined the "vibe shift" five years ago to describe the unease millennials felt coming out of the pandemic. Of all the terms Monahan has coined — from "normcore" to the "boom boom aesthetic" — the vibe shift may have been the stickiest. He and Amy revisited his predictions from five years ago and discuss what he got right and wrong. Monahan offers predictions on whether smart glasses will take; where rage bait is heading; the future of "flexing"; where the Met Gala goes from here; and what luxury fashion has to do to recover. CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

03:00 The boom boom aesthetic and the '80s that weren't

06:00 Why crypto killed streetwear

08:30 Normcore, and the anxiety behind it

19:00 Did tackiness give way to taste?

24:00 Smart glasses, glassholes and surveillance

38:00 Rage bait and the clipping economy

47:30 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' and Jeff Bezos

1:04:30 How does luxury fashion recover? 📩SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row Newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe

Back Row on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@amy_odell 📷 Follow Back Row on Instagram: @backrow 📷 Follow Amy on Instagram: @instamyodell Follow Sean Monahan 📷 Follow Sean on Instagram: @8ghtb4ll 📩 Read 8Ball: https://www.8ball.report/

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How the Very Rich Really Live, From Billionaires' Row to Lauren Sánchez Bezos Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

Amy Chozick has spent her career writing about polarizing women — she covered Hillary Clinton for The New York Times, profiled Elizabeth Holmes right before prison, followed Stormy Daniels for Vogue, and wrote the widely dissected profile of Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

Her new novel, With Friends Like You (https://amzn.to/4yjRlvI), follows Emily, a broke new mom in Manhattan, who goes looking for the college friend who vanished — and finds her working as a high-end escort to billionaires.

To write the book, she researched the world of the ultra-rich obsessively. She also reveals what surprised her about Lauren Sánchez Bezos, discusses the detail everyone rehashed from that profile, and more. CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 A new mother, a missing friend, and a billionaire's escort

4:00 Billionaires' Row and the empty towers

13:00 Covering Hillary Clinton, and what power does to people

17:00 Profiling Lauren Sánchez Bezos

23:00 "They stopped apologizing" — the new rich

30:00 Hillary's suits, Lauren's taped-up Vogue pages

41:00 Is fashion getting tackier?

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Buy With Friends Like You: A Novel: https://amzn.to/4yjRlvI

Follow Back Row: @backrow

Follow Amy: @instamyodell

Follow Amy Chozick: @amychozick

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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The Met Cancels the John Galliano Retrospective (with Dana Thomas) [TEASER] Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

This is a teaser of a paywalled episode. To listen in full, become a paid subscriber of Back Row at: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Or sign up in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In a stunning move, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has cancelled "John Galliano: Horizons," the Costume Institute retrospective planned for May 2027.

Galliano's biographer and fashion journalist Dana Thomas joined Amy hours after the Met made the announcement. They discuss what this means for fashion, for John Galliano, and for the Met Gala's planner and previously all-powerful architect, Anna Wintour.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

00:30 Why Dana wasn't surprised

01:30 When you lose the politicians and the donors

03:00 "Not an aberration" — Dana's New York Times op-ed

05:00 The incidents that never got reported

06:00 The 2019 spa incident

07:30 What the comment sections revealed

11:30 Philippe Virgitti, still waiting for an apology

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Buy Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano: https://amzn.to/4cSeZHw

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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'The September Issue' Rewatch: Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, and the Sienna Miller Hair Crisis (with Kate Casey) Aug 31, 2026

Show notes

*SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription and get access to 'The September Issue' Rewatch Bonus episode!*

The September Issue is R.J. Cutler's 2009 documentary about the biggest issue of Vogue ever made up to that point — 843 pages, 13 million copies sold.

Amy is joined by Kate Casey, host of Reality Life with Kate Casey and a documentary and reality TV expert, to rewatch it seventeen years later. They get into what Anna Wintour really thought of the film, why she and her Vogue team hated Sienna Miller's hair so much, how it all aged, and much more.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 13 million copies sold — and what's left now

06:00 How Anna and Grace actually met

17:30 The retailers' breakfast, when Vogue set the trends

25:00 "Your girls always look the same" - Anna at her harshest

41:00 Anna at home, and the kids who didn't follow her

48:00 The Sienna Miller cover disaster

1:07:00 843 pages, and the era that ended

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📷 Follow Amy on Instagram: @instamyodell