Celebrities Turned Designers...Yay or Nay?

 
**NOTE: I am aware Carla has done a piece on Zoe already (see here). But we have differing-ish opinions. So here we go....***

Over the years, our culture has shifted away from the 'celebritizing' of supermodels (refer to the heyday of the 1990s and prominence of Turlington, Brinkley, and Campbell) and turned towards the sculpting of our actors and singers into new fashion icons. Noticeably, nearly all the covers of prominent mags now feature these stars, as opposed to the models that once graced the pages and adverts inside.

People like Jessica Simpson, P. Diddy, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West and Rachel Zoe have taken their celebrity status a step further, and actually begun designing.

I'd like to talk about Rachel Zoe. Yes, she has an advantage--already being a part of the fashion industry--but her job was always to pull looks together, not to construct them from nothing.

My love for her is illogical to say the least. I wish I could sit her down and feed her bagels until the bones were no longer visible through her leathery, orange skin. But once I began watching her show The Rachel Zoe Project, I was hooked.

For a girl that loves clothes, designers and accessories as much as I do, this show is equivalent to porn. Zoe has a studio full of haute couture, bags and shoes and gets to play dress up not only with the A-list clientele that she styles, but herself. She rubs elbows with the best designers in the industry, and sits front row at every major fashion show in New York and Paris. The last episode I watched featured Prabal Gurung, Michael Kors, and Oscar de la Renta. Drool.

The show is now in its fifth season and the stylist has come full circle in her fashion journey and turned towards designing.

Although nothing in her collections has been innovative or daring, the clothing is made for a chic woman looking for wearability. It is young and cool...a successful venture in the foray of fashion. While others are still putting cork wedges on their runways (*cough Jessica Simpson cough*), Zoe has managed to translate her fashionista sensibilities into a successful multi-million dollar business venture. As Zoe would say, that's pretty 'maj'. 

Check out Zoe's latest offerings for Fall/Winter 2013:
F/W 2013

And here's her take for this summer:
S/S 2013


...A clip for your viewing pleasure. It's hard to take her seriously (she's almost a caricature of herself), but it's a guilty pleasure nonetheless.

Posted by: Kiran