Lauren Conrad leaves her mini-mansion without both of her roommates and catches a departing flight out of LAX airport in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The 22-year-old Hills star had her first runway show for the Lauren Conrad Collection Fall 2008 collection on Tuesday. She answered a few questions for The Daily News after the show:

And Brody [Jenner], your romantic interest from last season, was in the front row. Does that mean you’re still together? Honestly, I didn’t even… [mysterious pause]. I’m going to see them all at the after-party. I’ve been backstage the entire time. I didn’t get to see my show or anything.

You see so many celebrity designers these days. Who do you admire and how do you stand out? I really like Gwen Stefani’s line. I think she has a hand in it a little more than others. In this industry right now, a lot of people are taking their 15 minutes and slapping their names on items, and it’s giving a bad rap to people who actually want to design or sing or do things they’ve always wanted to do. I’ve studied a little over two years, and I’ve worked in the industry since I was 16, and I really do design every piece and go to every meeting.

Source: Just Jared

With her immaculately streaked tresses, lightly tanned skin and sense of style, Lauren Conrad has become California’s version of Carrie Bradshaw. She showcases her own stylings Tuesday during L.A.’s Fashion Week, just in time to plug MTV’s “The Hills,” which returns March 24 (10 p.m. ET/PT). Conrad chats with USA TODAY about footwear, friends and her fashion pizazz.

Q: What are you up to right now?

A: Eating lunch. I just got back from a hike so I’m supposed to eat.

Q: That sounds so normal! To viewers, you’re this impeccably styled fashionista who interned at Teen Vogue. What’s the most unfabulous part of your day?

A: We are interns. We work 11-hour days, so there’s nothing glamorous about that. The only thing they don’t show is us sitting around being boring. We sit and watch DVDs and do nothing.

Q: Do you think of yourself as a style icon?

A: Not really. I like clothes and I like dressing fun and taking chances, but I don’t consider myself an icon.

Q: What’s your biggest fashion splurge?

A: Shoes.

Q: How many pairs do you have?

A: I have no idea. I counted once a while ago, and I was around 60. I don’t know. My favorites are Marc Jacobs and Moschino. I like having fun with shoes.

Q: Now, to The Hills. Is Laguna Beach baddie Kristin Cavallari going to be on the show in the future?

A: No. Not that I know of.

Q: What can viewers expect?

A: I can’t tell you that much. We’ve been on a break. My first day back filming was today. It was really nice to not have cameras around. But I do miss the crew.

Q: You have a clothing line, Lauren Conrad Collection, and are doing a show at L.A. Fashion Week on Tuesday. Nervous?

A: Um, yeah, I’m really nervous. It’s one thing to have your designs displayed in stores. To have them walk down the runway is a really big deal.

Q: And are you still in college at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles?

A: Yes, I’m still in college. The school has been so great working with my schedule. I take two classes at a time. My counselor jokes that I’m on a 10-year plan. I’d love to get a degree in the next year, in product development.

Source: abcnews.go.com

Over the weekend, the Hills’ Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt ventured east and headed to the Borgata Hotel & Casino where they hosted Saturday night at Murmur. Before heading inside to listen to the sounds of DJ Eric Cubiche, OK! sat down with the dazzling couple.

How is your weekend going?
Spencer: We’ve had two of the best dinners: one at Bobby Flay and the other at SeaBlue.

What was it like directing Heidi in her video for Higher?
S: She really directed herself. She was like,”‘I’m going to do this” and it was so much fun. It took us 20 minutes. We were already at the beach, we had a boom box with batteries, and I was playing it so she could hear it and sing along. It cost $0. Anybody that says negative things about it, it’s like, give me $2 million and then let’s see.

And what was it like being in a bathing suit? Were you intimidated that the world is going to see you like that?
H: I love the beach, love being in bathing suits. I feel like it was another day at the beach pretty much.

You looked great in it. I want the stomach and the body!
S: Heidi does more sit-ups than Van Damme. Throughout the day, all day.
H: I do a lot.

Heidi, who in Hollywood would you consider a beauty icon?
H: I think Charlize Theron is beautiful and Britney when she was “Britney.“

You have the abs that Britney used to!
H: (Laughing) Thank you!

Since your surgical procedures, do you feel you have more self-confidence?
H: I feel I’m more confident and more comfortable in my skin.

At least you admit it. Thanks for being honest and speaking up.
H: I’m sure every person in Hollywood from A list to Z list has had something done.

Spencer, what is the sexiest part about Heidi?
S: Hands down, her personality. There are 3 billion girls on the planet and they all look different, and Heidi has the biggest heart and has the most faith. She prays for anybody all day. I’ll find her on the floor praying and I’ll ask, who are you praying for, and she’ll say everybody. That is the kind of person I want in my life. Praying for me and my family and our enemies and our friends. That’s what I love about Heidi.

What is your status right now?
S: The status is that I can’t afford the $2 million ring that Miss Montag is looking for.

Take the money for the next video and put it toward the ring!
S: There you go!
H: It’s not enough!

Source: okmagazine.com

The Hills are alive …with the sound of cash registers going ka-ching. “Hills” star Lauren Conrad has her own fashion and bag line. Take that Heidi!

“I’m serious about my lines and I do them as a designer and not as someone on a reality show. I wanted to create a brand that will last longer than my TV series,” says Conrad calling from her Hills home a few days before Christmas. No, she’s not romancing Brody Jenner, but wrapping a few specially designed gifts for friends. (It’s good to be an FOL — friend of Lauren. See below!)

Conrad has teamed with L.A.-based accessory company Linea Pelle to debut a new line of her designed clutches and handbags. The star of “The Hills” goods will be available online only at lpcollection.com and shoplaurenconrad.com.

There is a coin purse ($45), a clutch ($145) and a tote bag ($350). The bags are classic black to dark olive green to deep mahogany and some have decorative chain detailing for what Conrad calls a “chic, urban” feel. Lauren also has a fashion line of laid-back, flowing dresses and tops including a gorgeous silk teal bubble dress that has graced the pages of many magazines.

CP: Was designing clothes and bags a dream of yours for a long time?

LC: I’ve always wanted to design clothes and then the bags came to me as an opportunity. I’ve always loved Linea bags so it was a great fit and they allowed me to do my own twist on it. As for the bags, I like purses with a more simple design. Now there are a lot of bags with tons of hardware on them. Mine have a simple chain. I wanted the bags to be classic because when I spend money on a bag I want to use it for as many seasons as possible.”

CP: Your bags aren’t as expensive as some of the lines out there.

LC: The criticism I got at first was that I wasn’t making my line affordable to fans. That’s one of my goals.

CP: Lauren, love the tote bag because it gives you a lot of room.

LC: When I designed a tote bag I wanted it big enough to fit magazines into it. I’m always traveling, plus I’m a student. You need a lot of room in those bags. Plus my bag has a clip so you can make it look smaller.”

CP: Define your own style when you’re not filming the show.

LC: I like to be comfortable in my clothes. I love the empire cut when it comes to shirts and dresses. It’s also something that’s great if you don’t have a perfect body. Who needs tight stuff? Most women are happy with a little give in their clothes. What I wear depends on my mood. I do love wearing dresses. They’re just easier. I love, love, love 3.1. Phillip Lim [available at Nordstroms and Neiman Marcus]. He does these really feminine details on his clothing and each piece of really special.

CP: Are you a shoe gal?

LC: [laughing] I’m a huge shoes girl. I bought this big bookshelf that I installed on the wall in my bedroom. I keep all my good shoes on it. You almost display the shoes that way. Shoes are like art to me. They need to be displayed. I used to wear mostly flip-flops, but I only own a few pairs now. Now I love my Miu Miu flats with costume jewelry on them. I love Christian Louboutin shoes. They’re soooo beautiful. I try to buy only the basic shoes there because they’re a little pricy and I feel guilty buying them. But they’re such a classic design.

CP: Can you actually walk in very high heels?

LC: I love heels and I’ve gotten pretty good at walking in them. My highest pair is six-inch platforms. I’m clumsy, but I’ve found out that you take extra care if you’re in heels so it’s actually easier to walk in them.

CP: Now that we’re in such a girly mood what are your makeup secrets. Do you also have a few inexpensive skin care tips?

LC: I do use Mark, which is Avon’s younger brand [She’s a spokesperson for the line]. Every few weeks I get a shipment of it. The truth is as much as I love shopping, I don’t like shopping for makeup. It’s all about the lighting in the store. So I think of makeup shopping like looking for a bikini in the winter. I like to get makeup at my home and try the new colors in a natural light. …As for skin care, I’ve been using ProActive forever. I didn’t have good skin in high school and this is the only thing that keeps my skin clear now. You do have to use it regularly for the best results.

CP: What’s your accessory advice? Is less more?

LC: I love special accessories. For Christmas I designed jewelry for my friends. Remember how last season everyone had those nameplate necklaces. Now that’s old. So I had nameplates made for my friends in 14 karat gold, but I had the jeweler take those nameplates and make them into rings that go across two fingers. You wear two actual rings and the name covers both fingers. Now that’’s something special. I also love to get and give scarves in every color imaginable. I think they’re great. I think everyone on my holiday list is getting a scarf.

Q: You’re going to Paris on future episodes of “The Hills.” How will that influence your designs?

Lauren: I’ve just been to Paris and it’s 99 percent for sure I’m going to do a fall fashion show. Paris was wonderful, but I’ll always just design for myself. My style changes all the time. Being in Europe, I was touched by how beautiful everything is …breathtaking in the details.

CP: Who has the best sense of style in Hollywood these days and why?

LC: I’ve always loved the way Ashley Olsen dresses. I love the Olsen twin style. They really will try everything. These girls don’t follow a trend. They set their own trends. Anyone can open a magazine and dress the way they tell you to dress. It takes time to create your own style and the Olsens are brave and take risks. I take risks, too, wearing my clothes on the show. I’ve worn the entire line.

CP: OK, tell us everything that will happen in the future of “The Hills.” We gotta ask.

LC: [laughing] I’m not supposed to talk about it. When I give things away, I get in trouble!

Source: suntimes.com

Q: On “The Hills,” how did Heidi and Lauren know each other in the first place? They seem to be from two different worlds. — Penny, Collierville, Tenn.

A: Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag, the best friends and roommates on the first season of “Laguna Beach” spin-off “The Hills,” met during orientation at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2004. (They have since become enemies.)

“Everyone in the room was kind of gothy, and we were the two blonde girls in the room scared out of our minds. I ran up to her and said, ‘Will you please talk to me,’” Heidi once told The New York Times. In other interviews, Heidi has said that she’d never actually seen “Laguna Beach,” so she didn’t recognize Lauren from the series (later, Heidi appeared briefly on “Laguna”).

During the second season of “Laguna Beach,” Lauren returned after attending school for only a semester. In 2005, she moved to Los Angeles, moved in with Heidi, began attending the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, interned at Teen Vogue and filmed “The Hills.” And the rest is MTV history.

By the way, as we learned on last Monday’s finale, MTV has ordered an additional eight episodes to extend this season; they’ll air early next year and will follow Lauren’s time in Paris and the aftermath of Spencer and Heidi’s apparent break-up — although the two members of this frequently-despised couple have since appeared together in the real world.

Source: msnbc.msn.com

Lauren Conrad says she has reenacted some conversations and run-ins for MTV’s cameras. Since the debut of high school reality show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County in 2004, most of Lauren Conrad’s life has been documented by MTV. But this year, on Laguna spin-off The Hills (its third-season finale airs tonight at 10 p.m.), the 21-year-old and her gal pals became more famous than ever, keeping audiences captivated both on-screen and off: The show averages about 4 million viewers a week, and for proof of their off-screen popularity…well, just scan any celebrity weekly or gossip blog site.So what makes Conrad’s life oh-so-fascinating? We checked in with the California girl to ask her ourselves. Plus, she admits which silly rumor she’d like to put to rest once and for all, and what really went down the night of the infamous ”nail polish-gate.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Looking back now on your life since Laguna, did you ever think you would get the opportunities that you’ve had?
LAUREN CONRAD: None of us knew what we were getting into when we signed up for Laguna, so everything that’s followed has been so crazy and unexpected. We were thrown into the spotlight very quickly [this year]. It was a lot more intense than before. We’ve had to deal with paparazzi following us, and when we go on dates, it’s reported the next day. It’s very weird.

Did you have to adjust your life at all because of the constant attention? Like now maybe when you go out, you’re not just going to wear sweatpants because someone might take your picture. Is there stuff like that you’re more conscious of?
I think it helps that [my friends and I] are all going through it together, so we can all relate. But yeah, you do have to take a second look in the mirror and do all those things. But with doing a reality show, it’s become a habit to do that anyway because you roll out of bed in the morning, and you’re making breakfast and there are cameras in your kitchen.

Is it true you had to move apartments because so many people were coming by?
Yeah. We filmed at an apartment building right next to it, but we filmed the exterior of another building because people found out where we lived and what apartment we had, and so in the middle of the night — whether they were drunk or just crazy — people would come and knock on our door. It was scary for us. So we switched apartments but continued filming in front of the other one so people wouldn’t know where we lived.

Does it ever annoy you how meticulous people have gotten when watching The Hills? Take, for example, what everyone is referring to as ”nail polish-gate” — one scene showed you wearing red nail polish, but then in a scene that was presented as happening a little later that same night, the polish was gone. What happened there?The Hills is filmed exactly the same as Laguna. So when people started picking out these very little things, it was weird to me because anyone who has worked on a reality show knows how they’re filmed. We’re not filming The Truman Show, we don’t have cameras set up all around our apartment, and they’re not with us 24/7. Basically what they’re doing is taking our lives and telling a story. For example, the night [of the nail-polish incident, while on a date with model Gavin], the cameras stopped rolling, and I went out to a club with [Gavin]. I went home and called someone [Brody], and the next day talked about it. [MTV] was like, Okay, well, we need to get that on tape, and since they’re trying to tell a story the right way, I basically had to go and call [Brody] again, have the exact same conversation on camera. I mean, it’s not lying to anyone, it’s telling what really happened, but it’s just the way they film reality shows.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It must feel weird having to reenact those things, though.
LAUREN CONRAD: No, I think there are just certain things that have become normal. Like, even when we’re not being filmed, if an airplane flies over me, I stop talking. If I’m about to tell someone a secret or sing, I take my finger and feel across the top of my shirt to see if I’m wearing a microphone. Or I’ll do it to rub the top of the microphone, because that messes with the sound and they can’t hear you when you do that.

Would you say that when you see the show and how it’s edited that it feels real to you? It really is your life being portrayed?
Yeah, they’re telling exactly what happened. We don’t have writers on this show. We make our own decisions; we say what we want to say. That’s who we are. People can sit back and say it’s real, it’s fake, but at the end of the day to me this is real because this is my life. Someone else having a lighting crew coming in to their apartment at 8 o’clock in the morning and set up booms and lights is very weird. But for me, that’s real. That’s how I live my life.

When it comes to the Heidi situation, how much do you feel that’s portrayed accurately? Do you ever think it’s maybe overdramatized?
I don’t think so. I think that’s very real. It’s very hard to lose someone who’s the closest person to you in your life. That’s a very real situation. It was very hard for me to be betrayed by someone who I loved and considered my closest friend. It’s especially hard when you’re in our situation right now where it’s very hard to trust people — then when you have the person you trust the most do something to you, it’s very difficult because it makes you question every relationship you have.

It’s just funny because you guys end up showing up at the same places sometimes. Is that at all ever planned by MTV?
Well, we don’t know about it. There was one event we went to, which we were both going to, and MTV knew it, and we had seen her boss’ name on the board of the event, so we kind of assumed she would be there. But there was one incident when we showed up to a restaurant not knowing the other was going to be there, and MTV had set that up. But they only set that up because it was happening off-camera — we were getting into these situations where we were running into [Heidi and Spencer] and [MTV] kept missing them. They just wanted to put us in that same situation and see how we reacted because they didn’t have it on camera. [MTV had no comment about Conrad's statements.]

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What do you think it is that makes your life so fascinating to people?
LAUREN CONRAD: That’s one of the biggest questions I ask people when they talk to me about the show, what the appeal is, because I don’t know. I think people are just fascinated with other people’s lives in general. I mean, that’s why we watch any scripted show, or when we’re in high school and we gossip about other people. People are just obsessed with other people’s lives. I don’t know whether it’s kind of a way to escape their own, or something to follow…I really couldn’t tell you.

There must be something drawing so many viewers in each week.
I think we’re relatable. We really are very lucky, the lives we live — we get to live in L.A., it’s very glamorous, we have great jobs, and we have a lot of fun — but at the same time, no matter how great our lives are, we’re still going to deal with the same problems as anybody else.

What is one of the biggest misconceptions about you?
They’re usually really silly things, not a big deal.

But is there anything you hear or read about yourself and think, ”Hey! That’s not me”?
The only thing that ever really bothers me is that a lot of people think I’m that girl who hates your boyfriend. I’m really not that girl. Some of my friends’ boyfriends are my best friends. We just happened to have a very similar situation happen two times in a row on the show [first with Heidi's boyfriend Spencer, then with Audrina's boyfriend Justin Bobby], and people were seeing a pattern. It really had nothing to do with me not wanting my friends to be happy or have boyfriends, but I had two friends in a row date guys who kind of sucked.

Speaking of Audrina and Justin: What do you think about them being portrayed by James Franco and Mila Kunis on FunnyOrDie.com?
I thought it was kind of cool that such big actors would go and imitate the show. I think they were just kind of making fun.

Source: ew.com