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"For me, life is a red carpet." This is how we enter celeb stylist Rachel Zoe's fabulously hectic life, with business manager-slash-husband Rodger (yes, with a 'd'), #1 "rock" assistant Taylor, and #2 assistant Brad (fresh from Vogue and slated for grunt work and abuse from Taylor). The scripted hand is felt throughout, mostly with the storyline of Zoe wanting to create a Rachel Zoe brand, but there is actual work to be done, which does give this reality show a dose of, well, reality, at least at 'camp Zoe.'
While the team crazily hunts down looks for Joy Bryant to wear at the Vogue-sponsored 'Art of Elysium' event, we watch Zoe shop for herself like a crazy person (she takes the "Balmain dress, the Chanel necklace and the 'Birk'" at Decades), take meetings with Michael Kors (where he tells her she'll have a "fashion baby...have a cesarean on May 22nd and be in a stretch jersey dress in three days"), and make her Piperlime shoe picks (illuminatingly, Piperlime sends her tons of shoes, they call her and she tells them what she likes and doesn't like and why—per Zoe, her picks sell out in an hour!). Though the Zoe-isms, expressions of fashion-related excitement peppered throughout the show, could really drive you away: "I die"; "Die, die"; "She'll kill it"; "This is killing it n a whole other level"; "You're shutting it down."
By show's end, we were dumbfounded by a few developments: First, Zoe wants a baby? Despite her insistence that she has no anorexia or other eating issues, we really wonder if she'd be willing to gain, like, 20 pounds. Second, she says she wants to put her name "everywhere" on "denim, eyewear, accessories...sunglasses, undergarments, jewelry." Hasn't she heard the tale of DVF, who had to crawl out of over saturation hell? Third, Brad, who's having tension with Taylor because he doesn't know how to do everything immediately and she won't train him at all says he doesn't want to quit because "I spent a year of my life trying to get this job." So, was he truly gunning for this job before becoming a reality star was part of the equation? Zoe had lost luster for quite sometime, but, oh, has this brought her back.
· Reality of Fashion: The Rachel Zoe Project Debuts Tomorrow! [Racked]