FASHION Magazine

By Dennis Hensley

Asked to name her favourite perk of TV stardom, Rachel Bilson, who plays sweet but spoiled good-time girl Summer Roberts on The O.C., doesn’t think long. “I got a Chanel purse,” she says over tea at a café in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. “Black, one from the New York collection.” But Bilson, wearing a chocolate-coloured sweater over a white T-shirt, black jeans and vintage Cleopatra-style sandals, is self-aware enough to know what rhapsodizing over celeb freebies comes off like. “It’s backwards. When you can afford it, you get it for free. But, you know, as a girl, when you get a new purse it makes you happy.”

Which is not to say that she isn’t actively contributing to the retail market. “I have a shopping problem. Am I getting help? I should be. It’s bad! I’m a huge vintage person. I hate malls. I go to little boutiques. I love flea markets and all these amazing smaller designers,” she says, listing Mayle, Vena Cava, Jenni Kayne and Derek Lam as favourites. Of the pressure to nail a “look” every time she leaves the house, Bilson, who is often clocked in Marc Jacobs, says, “If I like something, I’ll wear it. You can’t please other people.” She gets a little help along the way, too. “My friend Nicole Chavez is starting to be a stylist. We’re on the same page. She’ll help me out, get the clothes for me. You have to have someone.”

Photographed by Mathu Andersen. Styled by Tammy Eckenswiller. Hair by Yiotis Panayiotou for celestineagency.com/Kérastase Paris. Makeup by Darlene Jacobs for Frank Management/M.A.C.