STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
stylethread site home page -> stylethread forum -> entertainment -> Article on Rachel Zoe - stylist to Nicole, Lindsay, Jessica
Post Info TOPIC: Article on Rachel Zoe - stylist to Nicole, Lindsay, Jessica
dot


Marc Jacobs

Status: Offline
Posts: 2362
Date:
Article on Rachel Zoe - stylist to Nicole, Lindsay, Jessica
Permalink Closed

Here's an article on Rachel Zoe. I posted one earlier one earlier that was featured in the LA Times. The one below I found interesting.. read and let's discuss! :)




THE CULT OF RACHEL

By MAUREEN CALLAHANThu Aug 25, 6:00 AM ET

THE most influential person in fashion right now isn't Vogue's Anna Wintour, Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld, or even pop star-turned-designer Gwen Stefani. She's an unknown stylist from Los Angeles who has legions of New York City fashionistas unknowingly emulating her look: a deep perma-tan on a skinny frame, long, blown-out hair, oversized sunglasses, and a slouchy, gargantuan it-bag cavalierly cradled in the crook of an elbow.

Meet Rachel Zoe, progenitor of the ubiquitous celebrity magazine, "oh, I-just-tossed-this-together-for-my-paparazzi-chronicled-Starbucks-run" look of the moment.

As stylist to Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan, the 33-year-old Zoe (pronounced "Zo") transformed her charges from chunky, Ugg-wearing fashion disasters to tabloid "style icons," influencing hordes of New York style mavens in the process. Her style is so ubiquitous that celeb magazine editors have started calling it "The Rachel."

"I love it! I think it's amazing!" says Zoe of her East Coast imitators, who are actually channeling a third-generation version of Zoe's look through acolytes Lohan and Richie.

"It think it's incredible," she continues, in her Valley-Girl cadence. "Every girl, from 8 years old to 30 years old, is dressing like them. I see them in airports and malls around the country."

She pauses. "It's weird," she admits. "It's weird."

Amy Astley, editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, agrees - especially when it comes to the denizens of downtown New York.

"It's really surprising to see the East Village and Williamsburg hipsters dressing like Nicole Richie," Astley says. "Celebrity's been reigning for a really long time, and I think it's the ubiquity of Us Weekly, but I'm sure there will be a backlash. For super-hipsters, it's not that cool to take fashion images from Lindsay Lohan."

Zoe politely disagrees.

"God, here's a perfect example: I was just in Europe," she says. "Literally, I was with Lindsay, and the chicest women in Europe were like, 'Where did that dress come from? Where does Nicole get her hair cut?' It has gone around the world."

Zoe, who was raised in New Jersey and says she has always been "obsessed" with fashion, got her start at YM right after college - accidentally, she says. "I got the job through a friend of a friend, and worked my butt off. I did styling, market research, fashion stories, covers." She quit in 1997; "I needed more," she says.

She began working as a freelance celeb stylist for the likes of Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and Vanessa Carlton - hardly fashion icons. She decided to move to L.A. to cut back on her commute and make herself more available to her celebrity clientele.

And then, a year and a half ago, reality star Nicole Richie - mocked for her ratty extensions and penchant for pink Uggs - hired Zoe to class up her image.

"Nicole showed up to meet me in an airport once wearing a sweatsuit, with a leopard-print neck pillow tied around her neck, an 'I Love L.A.' cap, and her hair in pigtails," says Zoe, laughing. "I think she was doing it to torture me."

It's a measure of Zoe's talent that Richie's transformation landed her on the cover of this month's Teen Vogue.

Still, industry insiders find it odd that such a distinctly West Coast, mainstream, celebrity-driven look - which can be sourced in the back pages of downmarket tabloids - has reverberated so strongly in New York, which typically generates trends.

"These girls want to be Lindsay Lohan, and it's very depressing for a fashion editor," says Elle's Nina Garcia, who is also a judge on "Project Runway" and considers Zoe "a dear friend."

"I have noticed on the streets of New York a predominance of oversized glasses, lots of accessories, vintage dresses, cowboy boots - when fashion is actually getting chic and glamorous," she says. "But people want to dress like Jessica Simpson."

And that, tragicomically, includes the junior staffers at Us Weekly itself.

"The poor assistants here are going to flea markets and garage sales to emulate [Nicole and Lindsay]," says Hayley Hill, fashion director at the New York-based tabloid.

Zoe's had such an impact that, despite her relative anonymity, she's just been hired by The Gap to promote their line of bras, and will make promotional appearances in New York during Fashion Week.

"I think they hired me because several of my clients are the people in the weeklies," Zoe says, using the classier term for "tabloid." "So that reaches their audience."

The stylist says she cultivated her own look 15 years ago; she describes it as a late-'60s/early '70s pastiche of louche glam, offset by an earthier, "Ali-MacGraw-in-'Love-Story'" prepster/hippie chic.

Us Weekly's Hayley says that Zoe's influence is known around the office as "the Rachel look," - a reference to the mid-'90s haircut made famous by Jennifer Aniston's Rachel on "Friends" - mixed with "Golden Girls" frumpiness.

"It looks like they're all going on a cruise with their grandmother," Hayley concedes of New York's fashion clones. "But it's an L.A. moment, and Rachel Zoe has turned fashion on a dime. She's wildly influential."

Yet Zoe cites supermodel Kate Moss (along with retired Gucci/YSL designer Tom Ford) as her biggest fashion influence; Moss, in fact, is the girl Lohan is most trying to look like.

"We're obsessed with the way Kate looks - Wellington boots with shorts? Who else could get away with that?" asks Zoe, who makes up to $6,000 a day and receives piles of free clothes and accessories from major houses and struggling designers alike, all hoping her clients will be photographed wearing one of their pieces.

When Lohan hired Zoe a year ago, "I asked Lindsay, 'What are we trying to do?' And she said, 'Kate is my style icon.' So I said, 'OK. Let's be influenced, but let's not copy.'"

Yet Lohan and Richie are widely viewed as photocopies of Zoe - especially when it comes to their sudden, dramatic weight loss, which has had its own trickle-down effect.

"Their weight loss - I really think it was timing," Zoe says. "It has nothing to do with me. I would never, ever, ever promote anorexia. It is a serious disease. They don't have eating disorders. It makes me extremely uncomfortable."

Severe thinness aside, Zoe admits that the look she's created is about aspiring to the idea of a celebrity lifestyle: "It's about dinners, parties, shopping, going to work, to shoot," she says.

Or, if you're a New York civilian with a dreary 9-to-5 job that leaves you with a little disposable income, it's about looking like the minutiae of your daily errands are Us Weekly-worthy enterprises.

"It's like all these girls are from the same factory," says 24-year-old Lawrence Gega, who admits that he and his other straight male friends have a passing familiarity with Us Weekly and hate the impact it's had on formerly stylish New York girls.

"It's not fun to see," he says. "It's like, We get it: You have the same $200 jeans and $200 flat sandals. This is New York City!" he exclaims. "You think you'd see a little diversity. But when everyone congregates downtown, everyone looks the same. From downtown to Midtown to uptown, there's no such thing as personal style."

"Everyone's walking around like Stepford children!" exclaims a Lower East Side event planner named Liza. "I think it makes people feel close to celebrities, like they know them. But it seems neurotic to me."

In fact, New York psychotherapist and author Heide Banks says that when she meets a client who looks like a Lohan or a Richie, she reads it as a sign of low self-esteem.

"My job is not to be a fashion commentator," Banks says, "but the way someone dresses tells you a lot. When everyone's dressing like celebrities, that means they're trying to access some other life, because they're unsatisfied with their own."

It's a sentiment Zoe herself gets. As thrilled as she is by the impact she's had on the streets of New York, even she admits her look isn't necessarily for the masses - and that no one is ever served by copying an entire look head-to-toe, no matter how stylish it seems in a magazine.

"I think if you are looking to adapt a style, it's great to be influenced. But the key thing is to interpret for yourself. Don't copy."

And, ironically, the woman responsible for generating numerous trends says she never, ever follows them.

"I don't believe in changing my style because something's a trend," Zoe says. "People are mislead: They think because it's a trend, they should do it. And it's not going to work."

__________________
bumblebee


Coach

Status: Offline
Posts: 1550
Date:
Permalink Closed

i have a major pet peeve about "mislead"--as in "people are mislead"--it's "misled," people.  it seems like the darn LA Times should know that--they do have copy editors.  sheesh. 

__________________
crystal


Kate Spade

Status: Offline
Posts: 1269
Date:
Permalink Closed

bumblebee wrote:

i have a major pet peeve about "mislead"--as in "people are mislead"--it's "misled," people.  it seems like the darn LA Times should know that--they do have copy editors.  sheesh. 
LOL, that was my first thought too!  but as for people looking like clones... ya, i agree to an extent.  i mean, when you go out, everyone is wearing jeans, cute tops & heels.  but it works & it's easy... no one is copying a look per se.  plus, it's not like there is a lot to choose from when you go shopping.  if something is trendy, every store sells it & you can't get away from it until eventually it just seems as normal as a pair of jeans, so you buy it.  does that makes sense? 

__________________
bumblebee


Coach

Status: Offline
Posts: 1550
Date:
Permalink Closed

it does make sense, and i think in a way it has always been more like that in LA than in NY.  i think the point of the article seems to be that NY girls used to be more innovative in their style and would take risks and try things that others wouldn't.  but now they are all copying the nicole/lindsay/jessica look.  it seems like girls in LA have always been more conformist and sheep-like with dressing like each other, and i agree that it's sort of sad that so many people are jumping on the current "LA look." 


although to be fair, it could be argued that Kate Moss and Sienna Miller (both Londoners), and MK and Ashley Olsen (NYers) have been sporting some version of the same look for a while now, too--who knows which one was first--it's like a chicken and egg question. 



__________________
honey


Gucci

Status: Offline
Posts: 2818
Date:
Permalink Closed

interesting...i think this article (or a version of it) came up in another discussion in shopping/fashion on trends. i've definitely noticed that  a lot of girls wearing a lot of these styles in the street. with fashion it's always tricky to pinpoint where a trend "starts" but i do know that vintage cowboy boots have been big (in nyc) since at least summer of 2004. however leggings (which i've seen a lot of lately -- like 5 girls on sat) i blame solely on zoe, so it goes both ways.


sometimes i think it's getting harder and harder to be original. not that it's the ultimate goal, but the internet has transformed trendspotting so much that there's not really any delay between when a trend starts and when it reaches critical mass is virtually non-existent. not that it's a bad thing. it definitely makes it easier to get throwaway items at a reasonable price. but at the same time it's frustrating -- not even so much b/c i want to be unique, but stores are pretty much flooded with the same crap. i mean there's only so many versions of a tiered skirt/kukui nut necklace/military blazer that one can see before it starts become nauseating.



__________________
www.musingsfromamall.com  (my main blog)
http://musingsfromamallinreallife.wordpress.com/ (my personal style blog)
ayo


Coach

Status: Offline
Posts: 1634
Date:
Permalink Closed

I read this article the other day. Quite interesting. I like Rachel Zoe's style and I think she really did wonders for Nicole Ritchie in particular...(anyone else witness the debacle at the Heatherette fashion show?)


While, I do think she has created a bunch of clones, I really can't fault her. If you really have a sense of your own personally style you know how to take a trend and make it yours. I find it funny that there are sites that completely dedicated to what Jessica, Nicole, Lindsay, Kate and etc are wearing. I guess the idea being so you can copy their style?



__________________
Proud momma of two princesses
Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.
stylethread site home page -> stylethread forum -> entertainment -> Article on Rachel Zoe - stylist to Nicole, Lindsay, Jessica
Tweet this page Post to Digg Post to Del.icio.us


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse 		Powered by ActiveBoard