Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Bronson Farr/NBC Universal
The mere sight of Rachel Zoe saying “I’m Rachel Zoe” was enough to fill the cavernous room inside a Las Vegas convention center with shrieks and cheers. It happened at last month’s BravoCon — in which 30,000 of the network’s most fervent fans descended onto the Caesars Forum for a packed three-day schedule of panels, selfies, and merch shopping. A sneak peek of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season-15 premiere, which airs December 4, played above the “Gold” stage.
“You may or may not remember me from Bravo,” Zoe teased from the massive screen, “because I’ve lived here before.” Oh, they remember.
Earlier that day, I’d watched as dozens, no, hundreds of fans lined up to get a picture with Zoe, who wore a vintage Dior fur coat and 16 Arlington minidress with Rachel Zoe Collection trousers underneath. As Zoe’s “glam” fixed her hair before the photo call with her label-loving (and accent-swapping) co-star Dorit Kemsley, her petite frame towered in chunky Valentino heels (they were a half-size too small, but so worth the ice bath her feet required later, I was reassured) and her hands sparkled with Cartier and David Webb rings. Before the photo op, a makeshift curtain-covered wall separated us from the many women who’d clearly dressed for the occasion, wearing outfits that channel Zoe’s signature style: bohemian, glamorous, whimsical. When the fans were finally allowed to pose for selfies, Zoe was warm, occasionally making someone’s weekend by complimenting their look — like a group of girlfriends from Columbus, Ohio, who couldn’t believe they’d met their “style icon.”
Bravo fans know Zoe primarily from The Rachel Zoe Project, a show that chronicled her life as a stylist to Hollywood stars from 2008 to 2013. But back when her show began its five-season run, Bravo wasn’t the cultural behemoth it is today. The Bravoverse — the network’s expansive world of reality shows spearheaded by the Real Housewives franchise — wasn’t yet fully formed. A huge, glittery convention where adoring fans recite her Zoe-isms (“I die!” “Bananas!” “Shut it down!”) would have seemed otherworldly.
After the photo op, Zoe and Kemsley stepped outside for some fresh air in what looked like a parking lot, where Kemsley lit up a cigarette. In the distance, two fans spotted them and screamed, practically clawing their way through the fence. Zoe seemed totally unfazed by this; throughout the day she maintained a calm “confessional tone,” delivering quotable soundbites like she was doing an interview in front of a green screen. She appeared relaxed and unflappable, which is probably a good thing since now she’s on a show known for its “Dinner Parties from Hell” where the wives frequently go for the jugular.
As I watched Zoe, who wore brown shades to shield her eyes, I was reminded of something I learned from rewatching all 38 episodes of The Rachel Zoe Project in the last few weeks: She doesn’t actually like being in front of the camera. “I was the person that got given the lead in the school play but took the supporting role,” she told me afterward when I pointed this out. “I became a stylist — that’s a behind-the-scenes job. It was never even a thought in my mind to be in front of the camera.”
Zoe isn’t just back in front of the camera; she’s joining a totally different type of show — one with a notoriously fickle, fervent, and very online fandom. And she’s choosing to do so when her life is in flux.
Last year, Zoe and her husband of 26 years, Rodger Berman, announced their separation. “Everyone in life called us The Notebook couple, including my sister,” she tells me. “We used to say we would die next to each other the same way they do in The Notebook.” In this new phase, she’s chosen to let fans back in. “It’s been 12 years since I finished my show, and what I’ve always said is that I’ll write my next book, or I’ll be on TV again, when I have something meaningful to share.”
Backstage, I tracked down the Bravoverse’s de-facto ruler, Andy Cohen. He started working on The Rachel Zoe Project as an executive producer before he made the move from NBC executive to onscreen talent as the host of the Housewives reunion shows and Watch What Happens Live. What did he see in her? “Well, let’s lead with the fact that she’s one of the foremost stylists in the world. She’s incredibly talented, but she’s also a total character. She’s fun to watch, she’s beautiful, she’s surprising, she’s funny, she’s fresh, she’s aspirational — and she’s perfect for Bravo.”
Vegas is a fitting setting for BravoCon: Doing reality TV is a gamble, and Bravo’s roster is similarly full of heroes, villains, success stories, and cautionary tales. Zoe tells me that part of the reason why she waited so long to return is because she enjoyed being outside the “judgment ring.” She’s well aware that there’s every chance people might hate her on RHOBH, and she can’t stop them if they do.
But that’s not what happened last time. The Rachel Zoe Project didn’t merely refute the tabloid depictions of Zoe — we’ll get into that — it allowed her to control her own story. Consider then her reintroduction to the Bravoverse as simply Zoe doing what she does best: branding. In 2009, she launched The Zoe Report, a newsletter covering fashion, beauty, and lifestyle that amassed 750,000 subscribers, which was acquired by BDG media in 2019. And after launching her first ready-to-wear collection in 2011, she now manages over 40 licence extensions of the Rachel Zoe name, from womenswear to eyewear and baby clothes, wallpaper, sunglasses, fragrance, rugs, and jewelry. More recently, she’s launched her podcast, Climbing in Heels, and posts outfit breakdowns on TikTok, too. As she steps back onto Bravo on her own, is this the next phase in a rebranding campaign? “To be honest, it wasn’t that calculated,” she says. “The reality of it — no pun intended — is that I’ve really always been the brand. The brand is me. The brand is my name, right?”
Zoe comes across as quintessentially Hollywood, but she actually grew up on the other side of the country in suburban New Jersey. Her father, Ron Rosenzweig, was an entrepreneur, and she grew up surrounded by art that her parents collected. (Professionally, Zoe goes by her middle name.) After college, she moved to New York and got her first job at the now-defunct YM magazine, eventually working her way up to senior fashion editor. Looking back, Zoe says she started styling at around 8 years old, when she would meticulously plan outfits for her sister and her friends. But it was during her time at YM when she first started getting freelance styling gigs. “I was making $22,000 a year, and I did my first freelance job and made, like, $20,000,” she remembers. “So I was like, Okay, need to go down this path.” Zoe credits Tommy Hilfiger with her “big break” in styling. “He put me on a two-week job with the highest stakes of anything I’d ever done,” she says, sounding vaguely stressed by the memory of working on the ad campaign.
When Zoe moved to Los Angeles in 2002, she leaned further into what she would become best known for: styling Hollywood stars. Jennifer Garner was her first celebrity client, followed by Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson, Demi Moore, Eva Mendes, Anne Hathaway, and others. She initially thought reality TV would be a way of showcasing the work of the designers she loves. “They’re my celebrities,” she says, remembering how she “almost died — literally” when she met Karl Lagerfeld. But she also wanted to show people the real her at a time when the media had turned her into a caricature.
By the mid-aughts, Zoe had become famous in her own right. (Even today, she’s probably one of the only celebrity stylists that a moderately online person could actually name.) The tabloids were obsessed with her appearance and blamed her for the then rise of super-thin celebrities. (Several of Zoe’s clients — most famously Nicole Richie — lost weight after they started working with her.) Rumors flew, including that Zoe was importing diet pills and horse pills for her clients to slim them down. “I might have been dressing Lindsay, Nicole and Mischa, and they were all very thin,” she says. “But I was also dressing all these other women, some of whom were having babies or had completely different body types and shapes.”
In fact, she continues, the actresses she worked with were equally bewildered, telling her “You never let us leave your studio without eating!” Even talking about it now, Zoe still seems aggrieved. “I’ve never done a drug in my life. What were people talking about? It was so incomprehensible.”
Looking back, then, why does she think she became the unofficial face of size zero? “When there’s nothing to dig up, it’s more fun to make it up. I was someone who was the least controversial person living this very controversial life — and they will create something if they can’t find something.” Today, being a Real Housewife is about being subjected to a similar level of scrutiny. Fans frequently find all kinds of dirt on the cast and monitor their every social media like and follow. They expect these women to lay it all out there and get mad when they don’t do it to their exact specification. And then there’s the cast, who are known to leak stories during filming and self-produce their own story lines — which may or may not resemble reality.
When she started filming RHOBH over the summer, Zoe was struggling to see Berman as a friend. “What you saw in my show was real. It really was,” she says, telling me it was gut-wrenching to see a flashback of her and Berman happily together during the season premiere. Now, she’s navigating a delicate balance between having her own feelings without turning her children against their father and encouraging them to have a relationship without sugarcoating things, either. Is she worried that the show will upset that balance? “All of it. Of course. All of it,” she admits. The fact that her children would be watching informed every choice and soundbite she made on camera. “They’re going to see this and they’re going to know this,” she continues. “But at the same time, they kind of really already do. I can’t get anything past them.”
Zoe is clear that she was the one who ended their marriage. “I’ve always lived under the sort of idea that people are who they are — that they don’t change,” she says. “And I actually think that is not true. People can in fact change.” Berman stepped out with a new girlfriend four months after their separation was announced. (Zoe swerves when asked whether there was an overlap, but I’ll leave it to the comments section to speculate.) In any case, it’s easy to get the sense from the way she speaks about “my ex” (she never uses his name) that it was over before it was officially over, and for her part, she’s “absolutely” dating and hopes to find a “mind match” who can make her laugh and smile. These unexpected changes are a large fraction of what motivated her to join Housewives — to show people that it “really doesn’t matter” if you’re the Notebook couple. “I don’t mean that in a bitter way,” she says. “But your life can change on a dime. It can change when the wind blows. I have seen it happen to countless people in my life. And there are things that, without question, changed drastically in our marriage.”
When I asked Cohen about Zoe becoming a Real Housewife, he said she was in the driver’s seat. “She actually asked,” he said. “And when she asks, you have to pay attention.” Zoe remembers that the conversation initially started on a call with executive producer, Alex Baskin. About an hour later, she tentatively asked her sons about it, and to her surprise they were encouraging. (“They said, ‘Mom, you have to speak your true feelings. And whatever those are, we’re going to hear them.’”) Later that evening, she called Cohen, by which point she was convinced that this was an opportunity for her. “To me, it was such a leap,” Cohen told me. “She had fronted and executive produced her own show, which was really about her business. But this is really showcasing her in an incredibly transitional moment in her life, in a vulnerable moment. It was raw and real of her to sign up, and it’s a really interesting place to rejoin her story.”
Now that filming is over, I wonder how Zoe felt joining an ensemble cast where she was very much not the boss. It was easier, she says, not having a whole show — and a nine-month shooting schedule, which she did twice while pregnant — resting on her shoulders. “Not having the pressure all on me to hold, carry, and produce every single thing is nice,” she says. “And I’m so sick of myself — my life and my voice — that it’s fun for me to be in other people’s lives. I’m so over myself.” On the cast, she is good friends with Kathy Hilton and already knew her sister, Kyle Richards, the last remaining OG cast member. But she didn’t know the other women and actually made a point of not watching any of the show beforehand. “My preparation for it was not preparing — truthfully,” she says. “One thing about me is I can never be scripted. Had I watched before I went in, I would have made so many judgments about these women.”
Back at BravoCon, after Kemsley had finished her well-earned cigarette, we zoomed on a golf cart toward the RHOBH panel. If you ask Kemsley, Zoe is “definitely one of the best casting decisions” for the show. “Everyone knows her as a fashion girl — and she’s incredible, she’s creative, she’s stunning, she’s amazing. But what I love most is how open and transparent she is and how supportive she is of other women.” Zoe was a shoulder to lean on as Kemsley also navigates a high-profile divorce. “Unfortunately, in this group,” she said, “I haven’t felt the support that I would have liked to feel from a lot of the other women.”
When the cart dropped us off, we found ourselves in the inner depths of the Caesars Forum, where catering staff buzzed around and piles of used dishes were everywhere. We reached an elevator, which was so visibly dirty when it arrived it made me internally gasp on behalf of Zoe’s pristine white outfit. “I don’t think we need to do this,” she said immediately, staring down the oily substance on the floor. Soon, we found an alternative elevator, where RHOC’s Heather Dubrow floated in, looking ethereal, and asked: “How was the season?” It’s at this moment that I realized that I’d grazed my knee while getting out of the buggy and blood is slowly trickling down my leg as I stand next to Zoe in white vintage Dior. I die.
Before the RHOBH panel, the cast assembled on leather couches backstage. With Zoe out of earshot, once again getting her makeup tended to, I wondered what they thought about her. Bozoma Saint John, Netflix’s former chief marketing officer turned sophomore RHOBH Housewife, quickly pointed to Zoe’s staying power. “As a businesswoman, she is tried and true and tested and still here,” she said. “That is a very difficult thing to do. I’m always impressed by a woman who’s been able to hold on to her brand — and her power — for decades.”
Erika Jayne told me that she values Zoe’s sense of perspective.“She has a lot of experience, not only on-camera but in this town and around this world,” she said, before bringing up the looks. “Something else that people need to know is that Rachel Zoe sleeps in her pumps! I’ve never seen her without a full look. What you see on-camera is what we see when we’re off-camera. And that says a lot, because she is fully committed.”
“She’s just so glamorous,” Jennifer Tilly, a “friend-of” on the show, told me, shimmering in pink Valentino and sparkling jewels. “And I noticed that after Rachel came on the scene, some of the other girls all started turning up dressed like her, because Rachel Zoe complimenting your outfit feels like you’re getting anointed by the pope!”
Moments later, Zoe walked out for the RHOBH panel to the loudest shrieks from the audience. It felt like the second coming of one of Bravo’s brightest, earliest stars.
A few days later, I catch up with Zoe over Zoom once she’d had the chance to digest her first BravoCon. “It’s indescribable,” she says. “I feel like I went into this alternate universe — I entered the Bravoverse! It was shocking and overwhelming and emotional.” But she wasn’t remotely nervous stepping out in front of thousands of people at the RHOBH panel, telling me she’s spoken in front of bigger Vegas crowds before.
I’d say Zoe bordered on serene, actually, which is a stark change from the last time she was on TV, when she was pulled in a million directions and her life seemed to be defined by its chaos. She explains the shift as being at peace with the bigger decisions she’s made that brought her to this moment. “At the end of the day, women, for the most part, don’t make impulsive decisions about leaving a marriage or breaking up their family,” she says. “There was a lot of time that I spent with this, subconsciously, without even realizing what that was doing to my overall being. Of course there are tough days, but when I finally made that decision to leave, it was the most freeing, happy, transformative time of my life almost instantly.”
She’s also simply a different person than the one who first sat in a confessional chair in 2008. For one, she’s a mother. “I wouldn’t survive any of this without my boys,” she tells me at one point. In fact, all roads lead back to Skyler and Kaius throughout our conversation, whether we’re talking about her decision to go back on TV, join TikTok, or even what she wears.
And as she enters a new phase in her life as a single working mom (and now a Real Housewife), it feels like Zoe is finally embracing the spotlight. She’s returning to Bravo with clear intentions — and her next project. “I’m not trying to be Mother Teresa. I’m not trying to be a martyr,” she says. “But if I can help women who are going through the hardest time in their lives and make them feel seen, understood, and supported, then I’ve done my job here. Like, let’s go through this shit together.”
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