Rachel Zoe may have been sitting front-row at the world’s best fashion shows for a long time. She may have been friends with some of the world’s top designers for years, too. And she may have been dressing some of the most famous women in the world for some of their most important public appearances for a while as well. But there is always that disconnect between fashion and celebrity: A tribe in fashion wants the industry to thrive independent of celebrity-driven exposure, while another group would be thrilled to send out daily press releases showcasing celebrities going out for a jog in a certain label’s socks. All too often, pure fashion is high-brow, and celebrity fashion is low-brow. It seems the more exposure fashion personalities like Zoe get, the more they’re likely to gravitate toward the more commercial and celebrity veins of work. Fellow reality-television prodigy Christian Siriano will pack his front rows with as many celebrities as he can wrangle, and align with cleaning sponges, for example. But Zoe seems to be moving seamlessly between the world of high fashion, mass fashion, and celebrity.
Zoe styled a shoot for the new issue of Love, an impressive gig for a true fashion lover’s magazine. This season on The Rachel Zoe Project, we’ve seen some of the best behind-the-scenes industry footage reality-television cameras have ever captured. Demi Moore and Harper’s Bazaar allowed Bravo cameras into Moore’s awesome cover shoot, which was the best look the public has gotten at this kind of work in recent memory. The level of access was surprising, since all too often magazines and celebrities want this kind of thing kept secret. Meanwhile, Zoe continues her gigs with everywoman brands like Piperlime and QVC, while becoming an even more famous celebrity in her own right.
So Zoe is in a rare position, but one that is fascinating to watch, where elitist and mass fashion exist in harmony. Maybe she’s another sign of the times, and maybe she’s also not the only one will be able to maintain her fashion cred while hawking $30 faux-fur vests.
