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If the rich are different from you and me — as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote — then that goes double for pregnant rich women.
One East Side designer has figured out how to make the needs, desires and outright whims of the well-to-do pregnant set into a business.
And soon a TV series on Bravo.
“Pregnant in Heels,” which premieres in early April, stars Rosie Pope, the world’s first — and maybe only — maternity concierge.
Pope is a British med school drop out and ex-model who designs her own line of maternity wear — which is how she got started in the hormone-rich world of expectant mommies. She is married to the son of New York Giants assistant coach Mike Pope, has two sons and the kind of personality that hollers next reality TV star.
“We’re in the middle of a generation of parents who really want to do the best for their children,” Pope told The Post from her maternity store on the Upper East Side.
“But in a place like New York City, women are really accomplished at their careers — and then they’re pregnant and they have no idea what they’re doing.”
On her show, bizarre baby needs go way past picking up a pint of Butter Brickle ice cream and a jar of kosher pickles.
Like the pregnant woman who wanted a couture gown to give birth in.
“It was actually pretty difficult because hospitals have regulations about what people can wear in the delivery room,” she recalls. “Everything had to be sanitary so that’s what I did — a sanitary couture gown.”
“And then there was the time when a [pregnant] client wanted to be painted naked on a horse,” Pope says. “Wrap your mind around that for a second.”
In one of the series’ first episodes, Pope helps a brand consultant from the Upper East Side, Samantha, do an all-out market-research project to find the perfect name for her soon-to-arrive son.
It was a potent, professional issue for the expectant couple, it seems. “We want our new baby to have class surrounding their brand,” Samantha confesses to the camera.
Pope tackles the assignment with a three-part plan.
First, she assembles a brain trust of academics, poets, and baby naming experts to generate a list of potential baby names. Then a focus group of marketing-industry leaders vetted the names. And finally Pope throws a dinner party for the couple, where friends give their opinions.
“It’s New York,” says Pope. “People are insane.”
Bravo, home of the “Real Housewives” series, liked the idea of the show almost immediately, says an insider, because it seemed a natural follow-up to its addictive “Millionaire Matchmaker” series.
It didn’t hurt that the series also showcased Bravo’s other major line of business — the unreasonable rich.