Bozhe Moi Tovarish. The calming powers of my secret stress-relieving Russian Spy hat have yet to take effect it seems.
OhMyGod. These bangs are confusing me. It’s literally like one day both of my eyebrows are right there…and then the next day I can’t find them anywhere.
OhMyGod. Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah So Tired Blah Blah Literally Blah Blah Blah Blah Puppy Blah Blah…
OhMyGod. Dude. That hair. I just can’t.
You know that’s BabySquawk for “OhMyGod. I need those heels” right?
OhMyGod. I literally close my eyes at night and can still hear that little Goy crying like he just got eliminated on Project Runway.
OhMyGod. Don’t look, SkySky. It’s too scary. Some of the crew are actually wearing Mall clothes.
OhMyGod.
Literally, if I hadn’t already died a little last week, I would totally be dying right now.
But if I remember the rules, I don’t think you are supposed to do it twice in a row unless you’re actually in the Biz. If you are, then it’s ok to literally die a little every time you turn a corner and see a rack of shoes or a full Starbucks cup.
Because that’s how the fashionably fabulous do things. But only if you’re in the Biz.
Being dramatically over the top is not for rookies. Someone could get hurt.
The Rachel Zoe Project was back for another round, trying to come down from a Mercedes Benz Fashion Week high that could put any heroin addict to shame.
Shield your eyes. Designer Detox ain’t pretty.
Now that the runway shows were done and all the superficial backstage air kissing completed (…love you, mean it…) Rachel and Rodger had returned home to regroup and get ready to push some goods down a few buyers’ throats. As stressful as putting together a 2 minute show may be, getting that same merch on a Nordstrom rack is even tougher.
Sitting outside on one of those New York City terraces that I’ll never be able to afford, Rach And Rodg immediately tried to outdo each other as to who was the most exhausted after having to suffer through an entire week of sitting in chairs and watching other people walk down runways in fancy clothes.
Rachel claimed to have not slept for 4 weeks. Which, if you do the math, is a month.
Besides being totz amazeballs, it also validated my assertion that she is either an alien life form or part giraffe, since aliens only snooze when they go into those smoky freeze dry chamber tubes and giraffes only sleep for 5 minutes at a time standing up.
It’s true.
The giraffe part at least. Look it up. Five minutes at a time, up to six times a day.
With one eye open.
The More You Know, kids.
Roger’s new coffee house hair had a few issues every time the breeze from the Hudson kicked up, but he managed to keep it out of his mouth long enough to convince Rachel to fire up the MacBook and read the online reviews. Though she claimed to not be the least bit interested, her laptop was already drawing enough juice off the neighbors wi-fi to allow the InStyle website to load in record time.
Everyone seemed to love the show, if I understood Rachel’s interpretation of the English language. She was only reading every other word out loud like you do when you have to skim Catcher in the Rye 30 minutes before the book report, so the whole thing came across a little like an onscreen communication from Starfleet during an asteroid shower.
But I think I got the gist of the thing.
After scrolling through a few more sites, Rachel was either giraffe-sleeping again or so happy that she was frozen in place as Rodger showed off his goosebumps and stated that now they just needed to sell some of the shizzle.
And that’s where Mandana Ba-nan-as came to save the day. At least until Rachel showed up with little boy/girl SkySky, who appeared to be so overly hormonal this week that I was afraid he was going to need a Burberry inhaler.
While SkySky squealed and wandered the room, Rachel’s VP tried to maintain some semblance of order with all the pretty people from Nordstrom and continued her attempt at filling up some square footage in their Designer Departments.
The buyers appeared to like the new season better than they did the previous assortment, but there was still some nose scrunching when it came to the über long Maxi dresses.
They also questioned whether some of the loose fitting pajama dressing would be too difficult to get in and out of for a normal customer.
Really? Since I somehow manage to wake up every morning with my Batman PJ bottoms completely MIA and a tee shirt wrapped around my face, I’m not really sure who these people are that have so much trouble dressing themselves.
But whatev.
By the time the next model came out in a pair of shorts and inspired some dude in the room to instantly perk up, lick his lips and say that leather was “something they were definitely into this season,” I realized that Mandana and I both needed to leave the building asap. Taxi!!
On the other side of town, Rodger and Rachel dropped by yet another one of their new ventures: DreamDry.
Though the building was basically a gutted out shell with about 37 visible code violations, it was a work in progress. When construction was completed, it promised to be the best new Blow Dry Bar in NYC. Because God forbid that anyone in NYC blow dry their own hair before they go to a Macy’s One Day Sale.
And apparently there’s room for one more of these bad boys in the highly competitive world of round brushing, at least according to Rachel and her partner Robin Moraetes.
Unfortunately, work on the building was falling behind. Way behind. And in case anyone couldn’t look at missing sheetrock, dangling wires and non-existent illegal immigrant workers and not figure it out on their own, Rachel explained that the whole hot mess was the Opposite of Done. Literally.
(Spoiler Alert: DreamDry did actually finally get its act together by Valentine’s Day, which opens so many romantically inappropriate blow…out…jokes that I don’t even know where to start. So we’ll just have to pass on this one for now.)
After brushing off the spackle from our Louboutins, we headed back to Rachel’s swanky new offices where, I’ll admit…I died a little again.
The places was Gorg. Throw up in your mouth a little Gorg.
Seems that at some point during her 36 months of Super Pregnancy, Rachel’s company had put on some sympathy pounds and grown to 32 employees and 5 divisions. And just like they say on a stranded Carnival Cruise…all that overflow has to go somewhere.
What? Too soon?
So now all the Zoebots are in some pretty sweet digs. And I was totally jealz.
Rachel’s newest Styling Associate Eileen came from a New York fashion background, presumably in the days when you had to blow dry your own hair to go to school, and she seemed really nice. She was one of those calm on the outside/ready to leak some spaz on the inside types who maintained the best poker faces ever as little Goy SkySky continued his reign of terror around the building.
Rachel thinks that Eileen is Maj. Not to be confused with Madge, for those of you who keep messing it up and clogging my email.
One is Major. One is the manicurist from those old Palmolive commercials. Google it.
And speaking of Skyler Morrison Berman, I didn’t actually see any DayCare signs anywhere on the floor, so I’m thinking that where ever the little Goy lands during a mini diva fit…Tag. You’re It. Babysitter.
When he momentarily went missing, Rachel took advantage of the silence and asked Mandana if she wanted to Download.
Because that’s how they talk in the Land of Zoe. They don’t Catch Up or Talk About Stuff. They Download. Except that while Mandana was trying to download, Rachel was going into overload. Dramatic overload.
But cut Rachel some slack. Her bangs were confusing her. Like, totally OMG…is my hair shrinking or is my head getting bigger? That kind of confusion.
And quite ironic when you stop and realize that the woman who can’t figure out where her own bangs came from is now teaming up with the husband who looks like he just finished working a booth at ComicCon to open up their own hair place.
Stop the madness. Just. Stop. It.
Those that can’t…do, I guess.
While we basked in that hilarity, Collection Manager Lauren met with some high profile boutique owners to try and sell some goods. Just as their big buddy Nordstrom had done, they also questioned the practicality of the Maxi, which was Rachel’s baby.
The legitimately female baby, that is. Not the other one that was rehearsing dramatic entrances from behind a chiffon office curtain. Ta-daaaa! It’s Celine! In a diaper.
Nobody wanted to be the one who had to let Rachel know that most buyers were not feeling the Maxi Love this season, so they figured a group intervention would be easier, with Lauren leading the charge. The Maxi was a risk. People didn’t get it. And…
Too late. Rachel thought the whole thing was Fashion BS. How could people not get it?
And more importantly, nobody wants a Mini that’s gonna flash your HeeHee while you’re playing with your SkySky.
(Wasn’t that was a song on The Wiggles PBS show last year?)
And where a weaker person might have turned to alcohol under such duress, Rachel turned to her magic stress-relieving fur hat. Because she didn’t know what else to do.
When Rachel is freaking out, she tends to put on hats. Fur ones. And we all know that when you’re at a loss for words and about to lose your nutty on someone, it’s always best to just dress up like you’re Natasha from The Bullwinkle Show or Lisa Vanderpump at a ski lodge, right? Must kill Moose and Squirrel…and Adrienne.
At some point in the all the chaos, Roger was back in his office chatting it up with the Other Rachel. Rachel “SILBS,“ whose main job at RZ Inc. appears to be nodding and smiling while Rodger rambles on and on.
And on.
Kind of like that girl at the bar who fakes it out with some Dbag until her friend comes back from that restroom. That kind of blank nod and smile.
They talked about dogs and picture frames and a whole bunch of other stuff that eventually sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Muwwwaaah Muwwwaaah.
Lest you think that you wouldn’t get your stylist fix this week, Rachel was all over it with a Coach music video starring the duo group Karmin.
Prior to the shoot, Eileen had stripped a local store down to the bare walls and sent 99% of their on-hand inventory over to the studio in poorly marked UPS boxes. So you knew before it even happened that something was going to go missing in the middle of Amy‘s Jingle Bell rap.
Naturally, Rachel brought Girl Scout Tagalong cookie SkySky to the shoot, and at least three of the camera guys contemplated stuffing the cry baby into one of the sweater boxes before singer Nick‘s missing brown one with the elbow patches finally showed up.
(Told you they’d lose something.)
Since Rachel was under additional stress to produce the perfect Winter Wonderland video before the actual holiday came and went, she immediately dove for another magic fur hat to calm her nerves.
And it worked.
The video was a big hit. Done.
Karmin rocked the fashions and the tunes. And Joey Maalouf was even there doing his makeup thang again. He didn’t talk, but it looks like he’s finally back from burying Jeremiah‘s body behind the Crate & Barrel on Melrose.
Blast from the past!
Now it was time to wrap it up and hit the office to try and move some merch. If only they could all get a handle on what customers really wanted this season.
OhMyGod. I swear.
Retail…and new bangs…are literally beyond my comprehension sometimes.
I can’t breath. Where’s my Bullwinkle hat?
