Bananas!

Photos: The New York Times

I have an obsession that I want to share with you. I just can't get enough of the Bravo docudrama, The Rachel Zoe Project.

The series follows the life of celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe and her attempts to balance her professional life with her personal life while dealing with her fighting assistants and her husband-partner Rodger Berman. The Rachel Zoe Project also features Zoe's longtime assistant Taylor Jacobsen and Brad Goreski, Jacobsen's newly hired assistant who clash due to conflicting personalities. [source]

Admittedly, I watched every minute of every single episode last season. Rachel Zoe herself, is a tiny, tanned woman with long blonde locks, carefully styled to look carefree. She usually has ropes of gold chains around her neck, stacks of diamond bangles on her wrists and enormous sunglasses nearly obscuring her face. Even wearing high heels, she is short and stick-thin, but Zoe does not seem fragile. The masses of jewelry, the sunglasses, the whole noisy, ’70s-inspired look adds up to a hectic, ostentatious, theatrical sort of glamour. It’s the look she has duplicated on her clients, making the so-called "Zoe-bots" paparazzi favourites, as well as walking ads for top designers. A cross-pollinator of the worlds of Hollywood celebrities, high fashion and tabloid magazines, Rachel Zoe has become a powerful image broker, a conduit to the ever-more lucrative intersection of commerce, style and fame. She's incredible. If only she would hire me to work for her. I could totally shut it down.

Photo: The Frisky

Zoe's sultry style is grounded in 1970s sex appeal -- part biker chick, part disco denizen. During the day, she favors super-skinny jeans, sky-high studded or python stilettos by Gucci or Alexander McQueen, cropped Chanel jackets, and gold chains with shark-tooth charms from Kaviar and Kind. For evening, Zoe goes for drapey goddess gowns -- vintage Chloe or Yves Saint Laurent, and always clingy.

Photo: DayLife

Though she may be something of a lightning rod for controversy, I must tell you that I love, love, love her and her Zoe-isms. Seriously, I die. This woman is talented as hell, works her ass off and lives a fabulous life.

I think that seeing Rachel interact with fashion's darling designers on her show — Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Michael Kors, Giles Mendel — gives her more credibility. Though the season came to a close with Rachel "shutting it down" at the Oscars, my favourite episodes were when she attended New York Fashion Week. I thought my schedule was crazy!

Photo: Altamira

Zoe was spotted during Paris Fashion Week 2009, being followed by a TV crew filming footage for Season 2, which is scheduled to start airing on the Bravo network in the fall.