Alisa Bellettini
| Alisa Bellettini | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Alisa Marie Bellettini October 1, 1954 Napa, California |
| Died | February 16, 2016 (aged 61) Sacramento, California |
| Occupation | Television producer |
| Notable work | creator of House of Style |
Alisa Marie Bellettini (October 1, 1954 – February 16, 2016) was an American television producer. In 1989, Bellettini created the landmark MTV television series, House of Style. The series, originally hosted by supermodel Cindy Crawford, brought together fashion, modeling, music and pop culture. Bellettini produced the original run of the series, which aired on MTV for 78 episodes from 1989 to 2000.
House of Style, which brought together fashion and music, debuted on MTV in 1989. In an interview for the 2012 MTV oral history book, "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution," Belletini recalled her original vision for the series, "I wanted to do a show about music and fashion because I loved fashion, and at the time, MTV was driven by music." Her other objective, in her role as show's creator and producer, was to "democratize" fashion by making it more accessible to average viewers. She later spoke of her vision for the show, "I just felt like I had to have a viewer in mind. I thought that the Midwest girl was really the person that I wanted to appeal to."
Bellettini was born on October 1, 1954, in Napa, California. She began her career at a radio station before joining the staff of Rolling Stone magazine.
In September 1988, Bellettini was hired by MTV News as a segment producer. MTV, which had only launched in 1981, was still a relatively young cable network at that point, but had become a strong influencer of pop culture. One of Bellettini's first assignments at MTV News was to interview the Beastie Boys, which Bellettini recalled in 2012, "They said, “Go interview the Beastie Boys.” It was so much fun–they poured beer on my head."
Soon after Bellettini joined MTV, a network's executive, Doug Herzog, announced that MTV News would start covering fashion, in addition to its existing coverage of the music industry. Bellettini, who had been promoted to news writer, was a logical choice to write the copy for fashion stories in the small news department, "I was always stylish. And the two other writers in the news department, one was a Rastafarian and the other was reading Hitler books all the time." However, Kurt Loder, the main on-camera anchor at MTV News, was deeply uncomfortable with his new role covering the fashion. Bellettini recalled in the 2012 interview for I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, recalled the awkward on-air transitions between music and fashion news, "Kurt Loder was our main news anchor, and fashion stories had to come out of Kurt’s mouth. He was not comfortable doing it. The look on his face, going from a Guns N’ Roses story to a fashion story–he looked like he was about to die."
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