WIN THE FINAL ROSÉ
Kaitlyn Bristowe has become Bachelor Nation’s unlikely lifestyle guru success story
On a Thursday night in November, the Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles feels more like a bachelorette party than a live music venue. It’s packed almost exclusively with millennial women, many of whom pose for photos with a giant inflatable bottle of rosé. Others sing along to early ‘aughts pop hits pumped out of a Macbook by the warm-up act, former The Bachelorette contestant Blake Horstmann.
Finally, he introduces the main act, fellow Bachelor franchise star Kaitlyn Bristowe, by plugging two of her brands. “Raise your hand if you have one of her scrunchies,” Horstmann says. The crowd becomes a sea of wrists sporting fabric-covered hair ties, which Bristowe sells for $15 each under her brand, Dew. “She also has a wine label, which all of you can enjoy tonight.” This isn’t exactly true, since Spade & Sparrows is sold only online.
Bristowe, wearing a neon-pink bodysuit under a denim jacket and jeans, struts onto the stage and yells, “Hello vinos!” She pronounces “vinos” as if it rhymes with “rhinos.” Bieber has his Beliebers, Swift has her Swifties and Bristowe has her vinos: the fiercely loyal fans of her podcast, Off the Vine.
Bristowe, 34, is halfway through her nine-city KB Fall Crawl tour, a series of alcohol-fuelled live podcast tapings that feature raunchy jokes and embarrassing “confessionals” from Bachelor franchise alumni and other guests. “The front row is always so lit, I love it. One girl puked the other night,” Bristowe gushes.
Plenty of Bachelor Nation stars score deals to promote brands and many create podcasts. But Bristowe — who was raised in Leduc, Alta., and moved to Vancouver as an adult to work as a spin class instructor — has emerged from the pack as an unlikely lifestyle guru for women who can relate. Peddling wine and scrunchies as a form of self-care, her brands are aspirational yet accessible, suggesting both indulgence and low maintenance. She’s attracted fans by doubling down on the fun-loving, wine-guzzling personality they met on television.
Caitlin Hanley, a self-identified “vino,” was drawn to Bristowe on The Bachelor because they share the same name and native province of Alberta. Plus, Hanley says, “She’s loud, she’s brash, and I don’t usually see people like that represented in any kind of positive way.”
Hanley, 36, began following Bristowe on Instagram, which led to her to Bristowe’s podcast. The podcast led her to a private Facebook group, where more than 26,000 fans of Off the Vine have formed a tight-knit community. Hanley credits it for serving as a support network when she was suffering from postpartum depression.
The path from charismatic reality star to successful entrepreneur has been well charted outside The Bachelor. The stars of Keeping Up with the Kardashians sell an array of goods, including jeans, shapewear, makeup and skin care products. From The Real Housewives, Bethenny Frankel created Skinnygirl Cocktails, and Lisa Vanderpump launched an eponymous wine label and several restaurants.
Still, Bachelor alumni strike a different chord. Most contestants started out as neither rich nor famous. Plus, fans see them at their most vulnerable as they compete to fall in love, which often leads to rejection.
“I think they’re just more forgiving because they’ve seen you already break down and make out and share your deepest darkest secrets,” says Jillian Harris, who is, like Bristowe, both an Alberta native and an alumna of both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. For Harris, 39, creating a lifestyle brand was a chance to reinvent herself.
After her turns on those shows ended in 2015, Bristowe “wanted to quit and run away,” she recalls in an interview. She’d been the target of intense shaming on social media for openly having sex on The Bachelorette. She’d also come under fire for leaking the season’s winner on Snapchat, which she says was an accident. It wasn’t until she started hearing from women who told her she was inspiring that she saw an opportunity to build something bigger. That’s when she reached out to Harris, a fellow Canadian.
“She gave me advice: ‘If you’re going to swear, swear. If you’re going to clap back, clap back. Just be who you are because that will attract the right audience to you,’” Bristowe recalls Harris saying.
But the same candidness — aided by alcohol — that has earned Bristowe fans has also garnered controversy. “In five minutes, he picked my nose and gave me an orgasm,” she said of her boyfriend in an episode that was later removed. “I don’t want my family reading that,” she explained on a subsequent episode.
Bristowe again raised eyebrows in October, when she said The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss “hates women.”
“I am such an open book, and I’ve shared so much that I don’t regret any of that, and I don’t think I’d do anything differently,” says Bristowe. Still, she clearly has mixed feelings about the repercussions of her fame. “I hate being called an influencer because I’m like, what if there are young girls out there who really shouldn’t be following in my footsteps right now in their life or might be getting the wrong message from me?” She adds, “I can’t carry that weight of other people and what that might mean for them.”
Besides, she wants to create her own podcast network. And “get a tour bus with my face all over it.” And put out enough shows and products that eventually, she might start to get recognized outside Bachelor Nation.
“A couple months ago maybe, someone said to me, ‘Oh you’re Kaitlyn Bristowe from Off the Vine. And I was like, cool. I like that. I built that,” she says.
I hate being called an influencer because I’m like, what if there are young girls out there who really shouldn’t be following in my footsteps ...