Rico's rants: Devorah? What kinda name is that?

Rico says it wasn't the name she was born with (it was Deborah Denise Trachtenberg), but Laura Holson has an article in The New York Times about Devorah Rose, the editor-in-chief of Social Life magazine:

There is a certain kind of socialite who spends her summers in the Hamptons: perhaps the daughter of a Manhattan real estate millionaire or media magnate; maybe an intern at Vogue or Sotheby’s who takes the jitney on Fridays to her parents’ estate on Further Lane. She hopes to meet a wealthy financier and settle with him into a classic six on the Upper East Side. And her summer “get” is an invitation to the exclusive party held every Fourth of July at the Georgica Pond manse of the billionaire Ronald Perelman.
Devorah Rose is not one of those socialites. She is a self-made creation who moved to Newton, Massachisetts from Venezuela with her mother in 1986, and propelled herself into the Hamptons social scene as the editor in chief of Social Life, a twice-monthly summer rival of the better-known East End glossy, Hamptons magazine. One part Lily Bart, one part Holly Golightly, Ms. Rose has a well-honed talent for self-promotion, a keen instinct for when cameras may be hovering nearby and a seemingly unerring belief that being fabulous can be a full-time career.
Other socialites of Ms. Rose’s age (she will admit only to being in her late twenties) may aspire to be Lizzie Tisch or Julia Koch. Ms. Rose instead seems to be modeling herself after a reality television brand like Bethenny Frankel, who turned her appearance on The Real Housewives of New York into two reality show spinoffs, a series of diet books, and a line of cocktail mixes that recently sold for a reported $120 million.
Ms. Rose has been dogged in trying to get on reality TV, which she called “the new Hollywood,” adding that “the Kardashians make more money than Angelina Jolie.” She parlayed a Social Life cover story on Ms. Frankel into a 2009 appearance on Real Housewives when she hosted a party for the reality star. That same year, Peter Cary Peterson, a star of Bravo’s NYC Prep and the grandson of the wealthy banker Peter G. Peterson, was a Social Life intern, securing Ms. Rose a cameo on two episodes. And last year Ms. Rose feuded onscreen with Tinsley Mortimer, the star of High Society, a show on which Ms. Rose was portrayed as a backstabbing social climber.
Despite her ubiquity, she has been largely relegated to supporting roles— most notably, the hanger-on whom no one likes. Ms. Rose is aware of her haters, but chooses to ignore them. “I was able to come to this country and make it in the Hamptons!” she shouted, as she barreled down the Montauk Highway near Bridgehampton recently, banging on the steering wheel of her Audi A4 to the beat of Rihanna blaring on the radio. “It’s the American way!”
It was the day after she hosted a Memorial Day party for Beth Stern, the wife of the radio personality Howard Stern, whom Ms. Rose had personally profiled in Social Life’s May issue. Ms. Rose bubbled with pride as she described the celebrities at the party. There was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Jessica White and two Real Housewives, Ramona Singer and Sonja Morgan. When Mr. Stern showed up, Ms. Rose said she nearly cried. “It was the highlight of my night,” she said.
The gradual seepage of reality television into the Hamptons is troubling for long-time denizens of the East End social scene. After all, the silvery-lighted stretch of potato fields and shingled architecture, once home to artists like Jackson Pollock and, today, to Hollywood royalty like Steven Spielberg, has always prided itself on not being the Jersey Shore. “Devorah made a job for herself, and a name for herself here,” said David Patrick Columbia, who has visited the area for nearly four decades and chronicles the lives of the well-to-do on his website. “But that’s not making it in the Hamptons.”
On another spring day, Ms. Rose sauntered through the Garden restaurant at the Four Seasons hotel in midtown Manhattan, her waifish silhouette accentuated by black stiletto heels and dark leggings, her short dress shifting beneath a hip-length black leather jacket. Matt Lauer glanced as she walked by.
Ms. Rose ordered an iced tea in Spanish and explained that she liked to come to the Four Seasons to write her pieces for Social Life. “I’ve always wanted to live my life like I was in a movie,” she said, picking at a plate of chicken paillard.
Her given name is Deborah Denise Trachtenberg. She switched to Devorah in high school, and the Rose came later, when she moved to New York in the late 1990s. She said she was born in Plano, Texas, and, soon after moved to Caracas, Venezuela, with her Venezuelan-born mother and Guatemalan father.
“I always lie about my age,” she said. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and, when she was six, she and her mother, a physician, moved to Newton, a predominately upscale Jewish suburb of Boston. Ms. Rose doesn’t like discussing her family. When asked over lunch whether her father still lived in Caracas, she dismissed the question with a wave of her hand, saying: “I think we can move on.” (She later said he was a businessman who split his time between Bogotá, Colombia, and Boca Raton, Florida.)
Ms. Rose graduated from Barnard College in 2002 and majored in English, according to Barnard. Four years after graduating, she enrolled in classes for a Master of Fine Arts in fiction at Columbia University, because she wanted to be a novelist. “I remember her being quite wry, writing about desire,” said Helen Oyeyemi, a former Columbia classmate.
At times, Ms. Rose can be creative in describing her life. Recently, she said she was responsible for lining up profiles and producing every Social Life cover (she has a summer staff of twelve), including overseeing photo shoots. When asked what inspired May’s cover photo of Ms. Stern in hippie garb, Ms. Rose pointed at the issue and said: “It’s in there.”
In truth, Ms. Rose, who interviewed Ms. Stern, had nothing to do with the shoot. “I submitted photos to her,” Ms. Stern said in a telephone interview. “I sent her two dozen different looks.” When this was pointed out to Ms. Rose, she looked annoyed. “Beth is the only cover I don’t produce,” she said, noting that she has profiled Ms. Stern twice.
Social Life’s publisher is Justin Mitchell, 42, a businessman who said he started the magazine because he liked to go to parties. Ms. Rose met Mr. Mitchell at a soiree at the Museum of Modern Art in 2001. “If you start a magazine, I will edit and write for it,” Ms. Rose recalled telling him. He agreed. But Ms. Rose seemed more interested in Social Life’s parties than its content. “The first event I went to, the paparazzi were there, and I had my photo taken,” she said. “After that, people started sending me clothes.”
In 2007, Ms. Rose, who started as a writer, became editor in chief of Social Life after Mr. Mitchell said his aunt, who had been doing the job, died. “The magazine is a big deal for her, a turning point in her career,” said Irina Shabayeva, a friend and designer who won the sixth season of Project Runway.
It also allows Ms. Rose a life she might not otherwise be able to afford. Social Life leases a summer house in Watermill where she hosts parties and stays free. Young designers lend Ms. Rose clothes, expecting she will be photographed at events and charity galas. Most importantly, Social Life is a bridge to reality television, whose stars, including Kim Kardashian and Whitney Port from The Hills, Ms. Rose has profiled. Meanwhile, whenever Ms. Rose is on television, said Mr. Mitchell, “We see traffic on our website go up.”
A few years ago, triumph seemed at hand: Ms. Rose secured a development deal with a division of ABC for a reality show called Social Heights. But the series was never picked up and was not broadcast.
Not everyone understands Ms. Rose’s fascination with reality television, least of all her mother. “She doesn’t know what I am doing,” Ms. Rose said. “This wasn’t the plan.” But for a smart, ambitious party girl who enjoyed the spotlight, being cast on a New York society show a few years ago made perfect sense. “It was an easy way to get attention if you were, like, a nobody,” said Rachelle Hruska, a founder of a party blog.
Ms. Rose considers herself a businesswoman. (She now has an agent, but used to negotiate many of her television appearances.) For those who watched High Society a year ago, however, Ms. Rose came off as someone altogether different: a villainous schemer. In one episode, Ms. Rose threw a drink at a fellow cast member, Jules Kirby, who showed up uninvited to a party. Ms. Kirby called Ms. Rose fake and said she looked like a man. In another episode, Ms. Mortimer had a shouting match with Ms. Rose, after Ms. Rose reportedly spread rumors that Ms. Mortimer’s supposedly rich boyfriend was broke.
The onscreen fighting was fodder for the tabloid press as the feuding spilled off camera. Ms. Rose told The New York Post that Ms. Mortimer “believes she breathes rarefied air”. Ms. Mortimer publicly called Ms. Rose a “social climber”. Still, the show was dropped after its first season. Ms. Rose claimed that the onscreen outbursts were scripted and that she and Ms. Mortimer were never really friends. Ms. Mortimer declined to comment. “Everyone was reduced to a parody of a character,” Ms. Rose said, adding, “It’s fine because it opened doors for me.”
“I can’t see anything Devorah would do to make her out to be such a villain,” Mr. Mitchell said.
But, for the established upper class, Ms. Rose’s insatiable and obvious appetite for reality television fame might be offense enough. Ms. Mortimer, said Ms. Hruska, is “a real socialite. Devorah is more of a fameball and not someone people take seriously.”
Of Ms. Hruska’s comments, Ms. Rose responded in an email: “These are people who kissed up to me in public, then tried to stab me in the back when it suited their interests.”
Others have distanced themselves from Ms. Rose. She had a public split with her friend Emily Brill, the daughter of the Court TV founder Steven Brill, after Ms. Brill declined to be part of Social Heights, said several people with knowledge of their relationship. (A flustered Ms. Brill declined to comment when reached by telephone.) And Kristian Laliberte, who worked with Ms. Rose at Social Life and was reportedly joining Social Heights, declined to talk about their friendship, saying he had not seen her in two years. Ms. Rose said she wished both of them well.
Last week, Ms. Rose was filming a new reality television show, declining to provide details. And this was just the beginning. “The goal is to have my own network and use the reality television genre to get there,” she said. Over Memorial Day, Ms. Rose and two friends went to Scoop in East Hampton to shop for dresses. As Ms. Rose examined a cashmere sweater, a man in his fifties congratulated her on Social Life’s May issue. She beamed. “That makes it so worth it, to have people know you here in the Hamptons,” Ms. Rose said, after he walked away.