Rachel Zoe Remembers Y2K
"I would literally say to [clients], 'Are you OK if the more mainstream media does not understand what you're wearing? They may attack you for it.'"
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As one of the Y2K era’s most influential and recognizable celebrity stylists, Rachel Zoe said she was never thinking about her own fame. “I never really had an agenda. My agenda was, let me make this person look and feel the best they possibly can, and just crush my job,” she told me in a recent phone interview. “I really just worked 24/7. Honestly, I didn't know what a weekend was until I had my kids.”
Earlier in Back Row: Why Millennials Dread the Y2K Trend
As part of Back Row’s WHY2K series, I called Rachel to discuss Y2K’s resurgence. Zoe rose to prominence dressing aughts tabloid starlets like Britney Spears, Nicole Richie, and Lindsay Lohan. She went on to star in her own Bravo show, launch product lines, and start a media company — but to many of us, she’ll always be the stylist behind some of Y2K’s most memorable celebrity fashion. Today, she’s also advising jewelry brand Oscar Massin, which made the diamond necklace Anna Wintour has worn to three Met Galas.
(Zoe noted that Oscar Massin is likely to appeal to Y2K-nostalgic, socially and environmentally conscious millennials, owing to its use of lab-grown diamonds and recycled gold.) In our call, Zoe discussed dressing everyone from the Backstreet Boys to Britney Spears, and just how much styling pop stars has changed today. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
You’ve always been into vintage, which is now much more popular than it was in the nineties and aughts. What do you make of that?
In the early 2000s it was like, no one repeat-wore anything. God forbid if you ever were seen in the same thing twice, unless it was a coat or boots or a bag. But now Kate Middleton and prominent figures re-wear things. I also think the stylists — over the last year, they're really leaning much more heavily on vintage on the red carpet. Even if you look at the Cannes Film Festival, Bella Hadid — in the past, she'd always worn those very sort of revealing, very transparent beaded, amazing gowns. And then, this past year it was really vintage.
You know one of Paris Hilton’s fashion rules in her 2004 book Confessions of an Heiress was “never wear the same thing twice.”
That’s when we became friends. I was working with Nicole [Richie] and Lindsay [Lohan], and I knew Kathy and Nicky [Hilton] and Paris. Paris was my number-one supporter from day one. She stood in the window of [L.A. store] Kitson with my first-ever book. I didn't ask her, I didn't even know she was doing it. We're friends now. She has a very big heart and she's a really good girl. She's funny as hell. She works so hard. And she doesn't complain.
I had forgotten until I was preparing for this call that you worked with the Backstreet Boys. What do you remember about them?
Pretty much any look you saw them in from the Millennium album, for the few years following — I did the album cover, I did every performance, every appearance for all the guys. My goal with them was to just modernize, polish the image a little bit. You remember that menswear that Prada did with those very tech-y-fabric suits? It was a really strong, beautiful fabric, and they just fit so well. We did white, we did silver, we did almost like a sharkskin. [For] a music video, we would do ten looks each. It's nuts.
On the Millennium album cover, they’re wearing all-white. Was there any concern from a styling perspective over like, keeping it clean and perfect and nice or not really?
The best thing about my styling career at that time — it was before [fashion] politics. They were such a success, it was like Beatlemania. Each had a very different style. Kevin was probably the most like my husband in terms of how he dressed — he was a little more rugged. And A.J. was always showing the most skin. Nick was always in some kind of overcoat. Brian was always the most tailored in a little proper suit because he was the gentleman, and so was Howie. They were such nice guys, but they were so different, so it was never like, "Oh, I want to wear that, you wear that." It was so clear who was going to wear what.
Was there outside pressure on them from agents or managers in terms of what they wore?
We moved so fast, and there was so much money involved and the record labels were so — the image for these young stars were so important. It still is, but I think if you look at the impact that Harry Styles is having right now — it’s what people talk about. His wardrobe literally is right out of my archive. If I wanted to dress up as Harry Styles right now, I could. Sometimes when he comes out in a look, I'm like, I swear I have that in my closet. I love the fact that he is making it OK for guys to just dress however. If Harry Styles wants to wear a dress on the cover of a magazine, let him do it, great. And I don't think that would have been as adored the same way [during Y2K]. I don't think people now are as judge-y as they were then. It was sort of like, Oh, a pop star is coming up, we need her to look sexy like this.
So then were you working with the record labels a lot in addition to the stars themselves? Was it kind of like a three-way partnership?
I mean, yeah. I was definitely hired to create or polish or try and reimagine an image for a star, whether they were new or they were already successful but needed a slight transformation. It came by manager, by agent, by record label, sometimes just word of mouth. I would have sometimes these very — how do I politically say this? — controlling men that wanted their artists to look a certain way.
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