As you can tell, I'm playing catch up. The NY Times had a rather scathing review of Rachel Zoe's new Bravo show The Rachel Zoe Project, calling the celeb glam stylist a "pox on humanity" further elaborating "Ms. Zoe is exploiting an aesthetic of
dissipation, invading our collective consciousness and spraying it with
dummy dust." Yikes! Scratch some eyes out girl.
Via reruns, I finally checked out the first two episodes of Zoe & Co and I can see the "dummy dust" part, but I wouldn't call Ms. "That's Bananas" a pox on humanity, but maybe more a pox on cable TV, and even then her show is not as sickening as some of that horrifying stuff on the FOX network. I do give her credit for this, Rachel is most definitely a master at creating that Cinderalla look for her clients. The looks she picked for Joy Bryant and Debra Messing were stunning.
Now, even though I don't think Rachel "Shut it Down" Zoe is a pox, I don't necessarily think she is the best of role models either. She has a serious skinny distortion filter, exemplified when she says stuff like, "it's already 7pm and I've only 'had coffee and a grapefruit' all day" or "Truthfully, I've never seen myself as being too thin" when Bazaar had to reverse photoshop her and bulk her up from a 0 to an 8.
Wearing thin also {pun included} is the "blowing superficial things out of proportion" filter like when she equated a puddle in her studio to some Katrina-like flood which could have totally ruined her relationships with the designers because the hems got wet. Um, I'm thinking you could rip the couture to shreds and the designers would still send you stuff because hello, they want a red carpet PR gem with an A-list celeb.
I like Brad and her hubbie Roger. The men on the show seem like the only grounded ones. Why Taylor is so mean to Brad is beyond me, but every reality show has to have the high maintnence drama mixer-upper.
The Rachel Zoe Project is worth at least checking out if 1. You want to see the fashions RZ has to choose from, and they are pretty fashionista amazing, and 2. You can put your reality judgments in check for a moment, and remember the context in which RZ works in, nada on spiritual or soul depth but just good old fashioned fairy tale red carpet moments. It's like those moments you take a break from your organic no processed food diet and go eat a Twinkie. Just enjoy it for what it is, nothing more.
