In Search Of Excellence - Rachel Zoe: Nothing Replaces Hard Work | E22

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Rachel Zoe is an icon in the fashion world. But before Rachel became a household name, she was 25 years old, styling celebrities like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys out of her West Village studio apartment. Rachel continued to make a name for herself as a stylist by putting together some of Hollywood’s most memorable red carpet looks and collaborating on iconic fashion lines. But, when she discovered that she had a unique platform to empower and inspire women from all walks of life, her creative and entrepreneurial mindset took over. And the rest is history, she became a best-selling author, a Bravo star, the Editor in Chief and publisher of The Zoe Report, and more.  Rachel attributes her success to working hard, being open to opportunities, and always being the most prepared person in the room. But, being in the spotlight comes with fear, doubt, and criticism, all of which Rachel saw as learning experiences and opportunities for growth. In this episode, Randall and Rachel talk about how Rachel became the fashion icon and influencer she is today, how growing up in a well-off family surrounded by beautiful things influenced Rachel’s career, the experiences Rachel had starting as a freelance stylist, the importance of taking risks, why she’s always the most prepared person in the room, how she faced and overcame criticism and tabloid rumors, and everything she’s learned along the way.  Topics Include: - The influence of her mother’s style - Education’s role in future success- The important advice she got from her father - Rachel’s advice for people who hate their jobs - Why getting over our fears is crucial on the path to success - Failure as a necessary ingredient to success - Rachel on designing her own style - How to deal with adversity at work- Rachel’s views on styling - Perceptions vs reality of being famous - Qualities she looks for in applicants- The importance of proactive thinking and planning for things to go wrong - Rachel’s ingredients to success - Marriage and life with Rodger and the secret to working with a significant other- The defining moment of Rachel’s career- Fill in the blank for excellence - And other topics… Rachel Zoe is an icon of the fashion world. She is a distinguished designer, editor, author, TV personality, and entrepreneur. She is the Creative Director of the Rachel Zoe Collection, which comprises ready-to-wear, footwear, and accessory lines. Rachel is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Style A to Zoe and Living in Style. Rachel had a reality television series, The Rachel Zoe Project which aired on Bravo and ran for five seasons (2008-2013). In 2009, she founded The Zoe Report, a daily newsletter about what she was coveting in the worlds of lifestyle, beauty, and fashion. With the success of The Zoe Report, Rachel launched another paper focused on beauty, entitled Zoe Beautiful. Rachel and her husband Rodger Berman co-host the podcast, Works for Us. She is also a board member at Baby2Baby and an artist ambassador at Save the Children International. Resources Mentioned: Rachel’s Podcast Works for UsSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

You have to do the work. People can see through it. You're doing yourself a disservice by not working hard from the beginning. It may not be the most fun thing you've ever done in the moment, but do the work. It will help you so much along the way. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire

to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Rachel Zoe. Rachel is a world-renowned fashion designer, stylist, investor, author, and philanthropist.

As a stylist, her clients have included Jennifer Gardner, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lawrence, and Miley Cyrus, among many others. She is the co-founder and editor-at-large of The Zoe Report, a digital media company and online style publication which covers fashion and beauty trends and reaches more than 14 million monthly users around the world, in which she sold in 2018. From 2008 until 2013, Rachel was the star of the Bravo reality TV series, The Rachel Zoe Project. She is also the founder and curator-in-chief of the luxury fashion, beauty, and lifestyle membership company Curator, the founder of a ready-to-wear and accessories line, The Rachel Zoe Collection, the founder and chief curator of the subscription service, Box of Style, by Rachel Zoe, and the chairwoman of the venture capital firm Rachel Zoe Ventures. Rachel is also the author

of the two New York Times bestselling books, Style A to Zoe and Living in Style, Inspiration and Advice for Everyday Glamour. Rachel, it's an incredible pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thank you for having me. It's weird. Whenever I listen to the intro, I'm like, oh God. I'm like, does this make me feel old? Does it make me feel like I have more to do? Does it make me feel like I've done enough? But it's never enough, right? We're going to get into all of that. I always start my podcast with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality, our values, and our future. You were born in New York City and grew up in a wealthy family in Short Hills, New Jersey. Your dad, Ron Rosenzweig, is a very successful entrepreneur who runs two different companies. And you've described your mom, Leslie,

as the busiest non-working person you've ever met. Your parents are art collectors, and you grew up surrounded by paintings by Frank Stella, Keith Haring, Barbara Kruger, and others, what you've called all that stuff. You also grew up with vintage Chanel, vintage Lanvin, and vintage Dior. Can you tell us how growing up in a very wealthy family and what you have described as being born into your mother's closet, which was like a candy store to you, influenced your future? Yeah. I mean, listen, I don't know.

I feel like someone probably described my family as very wealthy. I would say this. I grew up very well. My parents, my dad, very self-made, came from nothing, honestly. Both my parents really came from nothing and very hard workers, honestly. I think until my mother had children, she was working as a teacher. She went to Cal Berkeley, all of that. She was very politically active. My dad is an engineer. Both my parents are still alive, both retired. My dad still consults with different companies and stuff. My dad started two companies. The first one was a semiconductor company. He was the president and CEO of that, sold that. And then he started one called Anadigix, which created microchips and integrated circuits for high

definition television and a million other things. It's funny. I think growing up, I grew up in a town called Short Hills, which is very much like Brentwood and the Palisades. And so I actually feel like by living here, I actually, I feel like I'm home weirdly. But I think that growing up in a family that was very strong-minded and very kind and very supportive was incredibly impactful, honestly. And I think watching my parents, watching my dad specifically just work really hard and somehow be this incredible father, I now realize as a parent what a challenging job that actually is. I want to make sure I answer your specific question because it was about growing up in a family around art and being somewhat privileged. Yeah. It was that and it was also your mom had a lot

of amazing clothing, a lot of vintage designers. Yes. You've described it like a candy store. It was. My mother still to this day, I mean, we like to say she's sort of like this Jewish Elizabeth Taylor type person. She, you know, a lot of her friends, we call her Liz. We call her, she's very glamorous. She has always been. I have no memory of my mother ever being in a sweatsuit, ever leaving the house to take us to school, not dressed, not with lipstick

on, not with, you know. And I think growing up around that, it's interesting because I have a sister that I'm so incredibly close with who, by the way, went to University of Michigan. By the way, my niece is graduating from Ross in a month and my nephew graduated three years ago. Awesome. But she always says, I had you and your sister the exact same way. I would throw you both in my closet and one would organize it and one would take everything. So obviously I was the one that took everything. And I think it was just about being surrounded by glamour at such a young age and being influenced subconsciously by my mother and kind of having this overwhelming desire to be around beautiful

things. No matter what it was, it could be flowers, it could be a garden, it could be a home that I just wanted to look at. It could be walking down Madison Avenue and looking at beautiful things in the windows. It was something that I was very attracted to, whatever was beautiful. From a very young age, and I started styling when I was about eight years old. Amazing. Let's move on to education, which I think is one of the most important ingredients to our future success. You went to Millburn High School and then went to GW, George Washington University, where you studied psychology and sociology. How important is education and what we study in college to our future success? And is what we learn outside the classroom as important or more important than what we

learn inside the classroom? I have so many thoughts on this question. I do. And I'll be very honest with you. I believe that education for our children is probably the most important thing that ever happens. I do in the sense of, you know, knowledge is power. It's one of the best things I've ever learned in my life. But I do think that there are so many variables

to that where I think we've seen more than ever how different our children are as learners, how different we were as learners, but like nobody cared when we were younger. Do you know what I mean? Like it was sort of, this is how you learn. This is what you learn. This is the marker in which you learn. You get here by this age, you get here by that age. I think the foundation of education, the things that we actually use for the rest of our lives, that is the most important thing that ever happens. Because without education, we can't function as humans, in my opinion. You have no knowledge of what's happening. But I think that there are degrees of that. I think that there are a lot of myths around education in certain ways. I'm here to say that there are countless things that I learned in college or wherever that I'm pretty sure I've

never applied in my real life. However, what I do know is that when I got into my major, which was psychology and sociology, I got straight A's and I was obsessed with it. One might argue as a stylist in every part of my career at every turn, I use psychology. I have a thought that when you are going to be a doctor or a lawyer or something, you can really pick that path at a somewhat early age, right, to go down. And you ultimately become a doctor or a lawyer, whatever it is that you're going to be. Finance, right?

You're an econ, you do corporate finance and the whole thing. That's monumentally important and helpful. But I think to the extent of saying, if you don't go to college, you're not going to be successful. I think those days are actually over, honestly, in my opinion, because I can't tell you how many successful people I know that a few that didn't graduate high school, a few that definitely didn't graduate college or even go to college. And I think that the variable there is what are you doing with your life? And that are you more socially, emotionally intelligent than you are a student per se? And I have so many thoughts on this. One of the reasons is we were having this conversation with my kids the other day. And my husband and I were saying to our children, because they would say, oh, this one has already completed sixth grade math and he's only in fifth grade and like da-da-da-da. But you know, this child is, he doesn't really have the social skills to,

you know what I mean? He struggles in other areas, right? And so nobody's perfect. And I think education, I do think that your life experience, your social emotional intelligence is equally as important in a lot of ways as you get older. Because I think the ability to walk into a room and read it, know how to react to

pretty much any situation, having that sort of street savvy, that social savvy, can honestly take you sometimes even further than being a straight-A student and having never not shown up to school. And so I think it's really about, with these kids, I think it's about this healthy balance, the way we have to balance family or motherhood or parenthood and work. I think children have to really have a really healthy balance of social-emotional skills and academic skills. In the dream, they have both, but I think it's okay. And I think we really have to nurture children that learn differently than other children. And I think we're starting to as a society, we really are getting more accepting and sort of helping kids that have challenges in other areas.

You were a hostess at a restaurant during summers in high school. And while you were in college, there was a moment in time where you thought you'd be a restaurant hostess for the rest of your life. You thought it was the coolest job because you love meeting new people every day. You met your husband, Roger, that way, and we're going to talk about him a little later in the show. When you graduated college, you really had no idea what you wanted to do, and you went to your grandfather for some advice. On a related note to what we just talked about, can you tell us what he told you and whether it is necessary on our path to excellence? Well, it was actually my father. My father said to me, don't turn down anything that hasn't been offered. Don't turn down an

offer that hasn't been made because I was saying no to all these opportunities before I actually ever walked in the door. And I actually was giving a lecture to some younger Michigan students last week, an interview. And I said, that's one of the most important things I ever learned because I continue to use it in my life over and over. Because I think sometimes we get fixated on ideas of what something could be, and you don't want to go in and actually have the meeting or have the interview or even be open to the discussion. And then you find out, wait a minute, this actually is a dream job. This is a dream opportunity. I didn't know that I wanted to do this, but I actually do want to do this. Wait, wait, wait. Now that I understand it. And I think that what you're doing is you're really like closing doors that haven't been opened yet. And so for me, I kept saying no to things

because of the idea I had in my head of what they might be. And so my father said, we support anything you wanna do, follow your passion, because if you can love what you do every day, that's the greatest gift that you could ever have in your life because your job ultimately takes up a very big part of your life.

And I went in for an interview that I knew nothing about. And I didn't even know what the job was. And I did it. And I went in and I called my dad that first day. And I said, I'm doing this for the rest of my life. And I don't care if I do it for free. My daughter, Bianca, is a sophomore at Cornell, and she's looking for studying fashion, PR, and industrial labor relations, which is the school at Cornell that most people are in.

And she just got a job offer this morning at a PR firm, and she has two more in the hopper, one at a jean company. And I said to her this morning, you got to be very delicate with that balance because you don't want the employer who gave you the offer, which is a great one, to think about maybe you don't want to take it. So we're going through that today. It's one of those tricky ones. And it's scary when you're that age. It's so scary because it's all the unknown. You don't want to say the wrong thing. You don't want to do the wrong thing. You don't want to seem entitled. You don't want to seem ungrateful. It's so scary because it's all the unknown. You don't want to say the wrong thing. You don't want to do the wrong thing. You don't want to seem entitled. You don't want to seem ungrateful.

It's very hard. My kids don't always listen to my coaching. And it comes with a lot more authority if it comes from somebody else. But I think she's listening to me on this one. So we'll see where we end up. You've been in love with fashion your whole life. And you said that when you were young, you were always too dressed or more dressed for things. And you were five years ahead of the dress trend. When you got older, you were constantly doing people's hair and makeup. After graduating in 1993, you moved to New York. And through a friend of a friend's sister, you were able to

land a job as a fashion assistant at the now defunct YMT magazine. When you took that job, as you just said, you didn't know what a fashion assistant was, but you figured out it contained the word fashion. It was where you were meant to be. You were 20 hours a day, seven days a week. You were obsessed with the job. It set you all over the world. It allowed you to- And I was only paid for three, I might say. You made $18,000 a year when you started. And even though you were promoted to senior fashion, within two years, you still had a very small salary. At that point, you took stock of your situation. In addition to the money issue, you were getting bored. You didn't like what you were doing anymore and decided you'd be better off

leaving your job to freelance as a stylist. We're going to talk about your career as a stylist in a minute. But before we do, what's your advice to the tens of millions of people who are working a job they don't like, but who stay anyway? It's a tough question because most people stay in a job for fear of A, the unknown. B, they don't realize they can love their job. They think this is just what it is. Most people define work as the thing you don't want to go to every day, but you have to because it's how you make money. And I think to the extent that you don't have to do that, again, one of the things my father taught me that if you love your job 95% of the time, then you're really winning at life. And that 5% that you really don't like, it's why they call it work. Otherwise, it'd be called play. You're going to play every day. And so, look, I think the financial aspect of leaving a job is terrifying. So my advice would

be to try and look for a job while you have a job. Don't leave the job and then look for a job because that is a very dangerous game to play unless you can afford to do that. Most people cannot. And so I would say that to the extent that you can really try and think as early on in your career as possible, what your deepest passion is and how you can actually get paid to do that or something that has to do with that, whether it's food, whether it's finance, whether it's law, it doesn't really matter. It's just how can you create your life in a way that you can actually get an income, you can actually make money doing a job, doing something that you even like a lot. Because I think such a big part of, and it's a

much bigger conversation we can get into later, but I think mental health, I think so much of that is if you're waking up Monday to Friday, and sometimes more than that, and you're dreading what you're doing, that's going to have an impact on you. And I think for me, the greatest gift of my career has been that it's been a very, very small handful of times where I woke up saying, oh, I don't want to do this. I can't believe I'm doing this. Even on those like 4 a.m. calls onto set and stuff when I was like, couldn't even see straight. But I think your ultimate goal in life should be to try and shape a career around something you love. And if you don't start that way, then as early as you can do that, make the change. Because the older you get and the more stuck in a job you get,

the harder it is to then either start over or pivot. I really do. But I think in the world we're living in now, I think it's a bit easier. And I think because you can be remote, there's a little bit more flexibility in that now. You were 25 years old when you made the decision to leave YM Magazine.

And when you did, everybody wanted to know, do you have any clients lined up? And you didn't. Not a single one. Your plan was to work as hard as you could and make it happen for yourself. At that point, you had made some connections with publicists, talent agents, and managers. And when you told them that you were going freelance, they said you're hired. You started off by styling big musical stars like the Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and the Stone Temple Pilots, where you once had to get orange monkey fur boots for one of their photo shoots.

God, you've really done good research. I'm very impressed with you. Thank you. And you did all this from a small one-bedroom West Village apartment. And while you were doing this, you also started- A studio. And it wasn't even a one-bedroom. It was a studio. It was a studio. Small. New York City living. And you also started freelancing for a number of fashion magazines. Can you tell us about the fear you had of trying something new with no safety net, not a single client, no salary coming in,

and how getting over our fears is critical on our path to success. And as part of that, is the plan you had to work as hard as you can and make it happen something that everybody can do? Well, okay. Fear. I literally remember that day like it was yesterday, which is crazy because I'm not 25. But what I would say to that is,'s funny my nephew just turned 25 and I said it's a big one right it feels weird and he was like yeah it does feel weird and I said 25 is that year where you go okay I'm a grown-up I think those few years after college you're sort of like okay I'm figuring it out I don't have to make a lot of money like da da da. And then I think at 25, you go, okay, I'm me now. And every decision to me at that age felt terrifying. It felt like if I don't make the right decision, I'm done. I'm over.

That's it. If I don't do this job well, I'm fired. No one's ever going to hire me again. And the thing about being freelance in general, and a lot of people are in various businesses, you make as much as you work. And every job matters. And any job you pass on is someone else's job. And as a freelance stylist at the time, I was dealing with very high stakes. It was a ton of money. It was a, these pop stars were the most famous people in the world. I mean, the Backstreet Boys were like the Beatles. Honestly, it was crazy. Enrique, I mean, it was like we would fly into places and it was like thousands and thousands of screens. I mean, it was crazy. And so the money they put forward for those types of jobs was really big. And I think part of what motivated me was I was

working for myself and anyone who works only for themselves. You know, it's funny. People would always say to me, well, you work for yourself. You can take off whenever you want. You can take as many vacations as you want. Oh, you don't have to answer to anybody. But there's a lot of scary things that come with that decision. When it stops with you, every decision is the most important decision because it's final. And there's no one that you can say, hey, I'm not feeling well today. I can't show up on set. I remember showing up on set with the flu and I had 104 and I had to show up. It was the biggest, it was like this massive, massive like album cover job. It was huge, huge photographers. I

mean, the whole thing, I had 50 racks of clothes. It was like the whole thing. And I had to show up and I showed up and I got to set and I went to start the fitting and I literally passed out. And I just remember thinking, okay, so this is freelance. Cool. And I think that I never took a vacation. I never took a day off for probably a decade. I swear, I missed everything that mattered. Any baby shower, weddings, I mean, you name it, birthdays. And I think that that fear of failure, fear of not being the best, fear of not making my clients happy, fear of not being a good partner, fear of letting them down. And, you know, I'm like that as a person. I've always been sort of a people pleaser type of person my whole life. And I think that when you're a CEO or when you're working freelance in any job, there's that element of, okay,

everything's riding on me. Like if they don't look good, if their image isn't what it's supposed to be, if I don't work perfectly with the photographer, whomever, and it wasn't people putting the expectation on me ever. It was me putting it on myself. I think you are that person or you're not that person. And I don't think there's a better or worse. I don't think everyone is meant to be the leader of their life in that way, necessarily. It's not for everybody. There are so many highs and the highs are amazing, but there's so many lows. And so I think for me, ultimately, there was a lot of fear behind it that drove me. There was a desire to be the best at it. There was an overwhelming desire to make my clients

look and feel their absolute best and whatever that meant, I was doing it. That's really it, honestly. You're 25 years old at the time. You're doing doing it. That's really it, honestly. You're 25 years old at the time. You're doing very well. You had a lot of clients. You love being on your own. You love what you were doing. You love shooting with some of the best photographers in the world. And you're finally making great money. But there's a downside too. You were on a plane every week to LA, traveling with 10 trunks of clothes. It was exhausting. You were sick and tired, going back and forth. Your work at YM had brought you to Los Angeles many, many times, sometimes for a month at a time, and you'd fallen in love with our great city here in LA. So in 2002, you and Roger decided to move here. Back then, the fashion world wasn't really

interested in Hollywood. And as crazy as this seems, especially after watching Sunday night's TV program, the Oscars, Hollywood seemed intimidated by fashion. When you moved here, your mission was to try somehow to merge the world of fashion and celebrity. That's a big mission. Actually, it's a huge mission. We're going to talk about your first Hollywood clients in a few minutes. But before we do, can you tell us how on earth a 25-year-old with only a few years in the fashion business was going to do that? And on our path to excellence, what's your advice to people who may look at something massive like that and think it's impossible to have a huge impact on a huge number of people and decide they're not going to try because the odds of success are incredibly low. One of the biggest things that I always tell people in any interview, I really believe in not overplanning your life. I really strongly believe in not trying too hard to architect

your career. Everything I've ever done in my career has been on my gut and sort of just really using my instincts to navigate a situation and when it felt right and when it didn't. I think that you can't make unrealistic goals because you set yourself up for failure. And whatever that failure is, it might just, when I say failure, it might not mean that you're failing at your job. It might just be an emotional failure. You might be like, this isn't where I wanted to go. The same way you hear people go, I want my first job at 23. I want to be married at 28. I want my first child at 30.

In my mind, that is not a healthy way to approach your life. Because as far as I've ever seen, I literally don't know anyone where their life went exactly according to plan. And so I really think, you know, something my parents always say and still say to this day is best laid plans. It doesn't work. And it certainly has never worked for me. And so I feel that when I wanted to come to LA and I would constantly hear when I came from the fashion world to New York, which is like the most cynical, critical industry in the sense of saying like, oh, well, fashion world in New York, which is like the most cynical, critical industry in the sense of saying like, oh, well, it's not New York. Oh, well, LA. I mean, everyone just wears velvet sweatsuits there, which by the way, Pam Levy and Gila were the

founders of Juicy, which literally created an entire movement. So laugh at them all you want, right? But it was brilliant. And so I think that the opportunity here was to sort of make LA more of a fashion, more respected by the fashion world. And I'm not saying in any way that I'm responsible for that, but I just felt that the world should really blend more. And so when I started, you know, Tommy Hilfiger gave me my biggest break of my career while I was still in New York.

I think it was right before I moved to L.A. And he hired me to do a two-week long ad campaign. And I was 25 years old. And I was like, why are you giving me this job? I haven't proved that I could do anything like this. He said, I know you can do it. And I was like, what? And it changed me as a person

because I was the first thing I ever led, the most massive job of my entire existence. But what it did was it terrified me enough to do a really good job and then ultimately get hired on a million jobs after that. And that's the gift of freelance is that it's very word of mouth. And the way that you execute on your job is really what gets you the next job. So I think to tell people, keep your

goal realistic. You can't set out, be like, I'm going to change the way that we, I don't know, go to the moon, although we're doing that now. I think it's sort of like set realistic goals and expectations for yourself. And when you meet them, just keep going. And my number one driver, honestly, that it was never really enough for me. I always felt and still feel like I have so much more to do. There was never a moment where I stopped and said, oh, wow, great job, Rachel. Look what you did. Never. It's only now that I actually look back at things and they're like, I can't believe you did that. Wait, you did that? Wait, you worked on that? That video changed everything. There's markers in your life and your career that you look at and say, well, this motivated this. And this was the reason that I started this. But I never stop in the moment and get comfortable. Because in my

opinion, whenever you stop and get comfortable or complacent, that's when it all goes downhill. Let's talk about LA. When you moved here in 2002, you were shooting a lot of musicians, but through your freelance work, you met Jennifer Garner's publicist who hired you at the last minute to style Jen for the 2003 Emmy Awards.

At that time, Jen was the up-and-coming star of a new TV show called Alias, which by the way, I was in Lake Tahoe. I love those kind of shows, and I made sure we saw the first one. It also starred future A-Time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper. Jen was your first Hollywood client, and when you styled her in a cream-colored halterneck Narcisco Rodriguez dress, it changed both of your careers, yours and Jen's. And some interesting background here, Jen really liked simplicity at the time, and not in a million years did you think Jen would ever

wear that dress. Before she put it on, you told her that you didn't know if people were going to understand it. But when she did put it on, the two of you froze. You just knew. Jen told you it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever had on her body. The fashion press, the commercial media went crazy over it. Jen was a superstar. That was a career-making moment for you. You thought it was a gamble, but it was the most talked-about dress of the year. And from that point on, you started to work with a whole bunch of people, including Salma Hayek, Cameron Diaz, and Kate Hudson, and many others. You took chances with them as well. They were unexpected and sometimes even slightly controversial. Fortunately, the response was mostly great. And when it wasn't, you had to remind yourself that the client and you were happy and confident with the look.

And that's all that really mattered. You have said that if you don't take chances, then what's the fun in playing the game? On our path to excellence, how important is it to take risks, career-influencing risks, even if it means doing something completely different than anyone has ever done before you? And as part of this, is it okay to fail? And is failure a necessary component to our future success? Okay, so a couple of things. So one is that you are correct that the Narcissa was our first time working together, and it was a massive success. And Jen and I then fell in love at that point. She then hired me to dress her for the Oscars a few, I think it was a year later, maybe.

And it's the one-shouldered kind of orangey coral vintage Valentino from 1971. That was the game-changing dress that you're speaking of. And that was a scary moment because it was my first time dressing someone for the Oscars. And also, Jen's very simple. And she looked at that dress in the hangar. She's like, uh-uh, I don't do one shoulder. And I said, okay, well, it's worth trying on. Let's just try it on. She tried it on and she literally put it on and we both just froze. And we knew that that was it. I did not know that the world would be so in love with it the way they were. I did not know that she would shut down that red carpet

and people would talk about that dress forever. I honestly didn't know that. And I think in those moments, especially when you're a newer stylist, they're terrifying, those moments, because they are really a newer stylist, they're terrifying. Those moments, because they are really make or break things because people won't hire you if you're that person that's like, in those days, there was worst dress list, there was best dress list. Those are sort of thankfully starting to die out because fashion is so subjective that it really

shouldn't be anybody's call to say that, in my opinion. And at the time, the people that were making those calls were people, in my opinion, very often that had no taste. Those types of lists always bothered me. To our future success, is it okay to fail? And is it a necessary component on our path to excellence? Yes, it is. And that's why I wanted, because I knew it had something to do with failure. So people have said to me over my, what seems like a hundred year long career, have said to me, I feel like you've never failed. You've never experienced failure. So people have said to me over my, what seems like a hundred year long career, have said to me, I feel like you've never failed. You've never experienced failure. And I laugh because I'm like, that is insane. I have experienced so much failure. It may not be failure that people have seen or noticed or experienced with me, but there's a laundry list of failures that I could probably name or

write down. And I would tell you, in all honesty, was it awful? A hundred percent. Did I feel like, oh, I'm never going to work again? A hundred percent. Did I get some of the biggest jobs of my career that changed my entire path for the better shortly after? A hundred percent. I would say that any failure that I've had has changed me as a person or as the CEO or as a leader of my life. It has impacted decisions that I have made since that point. And it's made me, they've all made me stronger. They've all made me better. They've all made me rethink or pivot in certain situations. And I think the weird thing about failure

is that I actually look at failure at this point in my life, looking back, as sort of life-making decisions for you that you may not have made for yourself. Because when you're really in the moment and you're like a workaholic or whatever, and you're so wrapped up in it, you can't see it sometimes. You can't see what's in front of you. And you're not in any way objective about anything, any decisions or certainly any future decisions because you're so wrapped up in what's happening in the moment. And I really think that sometimes failure

really can be the thing that helps you improve greatly in so many ways. And listen, you don't realize it in the moment. You don't. You realize it probably like several months after or a year after, truth be told. But I think it's important that people learn that failure is okay. Your style is distinctive and unique. It's the main reason you originally became well-known.

Glenda Bailey, the former head of Harper's Bazaar, said the secret to your success is the clarity of your taste and uncynical passion for fashion. You've been credited with the creation of the boho meets rock chick look. Your look has also been referred to as Studio 54 meets Saint-Tropez boho look. You've described your look a little differently. Very 60s to 70s glamour, mod meets Grecian, a lot of gold and a lot of bronze, shimmer and very unstructured with bold accessories. One of your mantras is shine and gold, shine and gold always. But you're creating your own style and we're doing this. Did you look around at the fashion world and study what different people were doing and intentionally try to be

different or did this come naturally to you? Never studied it. I just did it. Honestly, that's why it's so interesting because over the past, I don't know, 10 years, I've had young people say, oh, I'm studying you in class now, you know, and they'd be at these like Ivy League schools or like fashion schools. What are you talking about? You're studying me. They're like, you're in my textbook. I'm like, what do you mean I'm in your textbook?

It was very surreal to me because I think, can it be learned? I mean, sure, of course, especially now with all the sort of resources we have with fashion and art schools and marketing and all of these things that you can actually learn in school. There are schools that specialize in them and things like that. You can actually train to be a stylist at various different turns. And I think being the first in certain things, there's pros to that and there's cons to that. The con is you're just figuring it out as you go. I just figured it out as I went and hoped for the best. On our path to excellence, all of us have many challenges on our way there. And I want to talk about a few of yours and start with when you worked at YM Magazine. You loved your job, but you had a boss who regularly stole the clothing you were using

on photo shoots. And if that wasn't enough, he accused you of being the one who was stealing one. The two of you battled. It was a constant emotional struggle for you. You lean on your husband, Roger, who at the time was working crazy hours as an investment banker, and he would cheerlead you 24-7. But instead of quitting, he would encourage you to keep going. He would tell you that what goes around comes around, that there will be karma, which is my dog's name. I believe in karma. Amazing.

You doubted that until one day your boss and you were on a photo shoot in Miami and the fashion director, who is your boss's superior, caught her stealing red-handed. She was fired on the spot and you were given her job. When that happened, the fashion director sat you down for a serious talk and told you that in order to succeed in the fashion industry, you had to grow thicker skin and stop being so nice.

You were discouraged by the talk and it made you question your career choice for a while, but you eventually came to the conclusion that you didn't agree with everything she said. She said you thought you needed to toughen up and survive the hardships that your boss and your boss made you realize that. But you believe people can be strong and nice at the same time. Can you be too nice in business? And if you are too nice, will it impact your ability to succeed? It's interesting. Yes, I believe everything you just said. And I did say that and I do stand by it. The one thing I would say that my younger self, I was very naive about people. So I think that quote unquote, too nice to me would be the equivalent or synonymous with

being naive. And when I say being naive, as I said, I've kind of grown up with this sort of people pleasing, wanting to make others happy, kind of perfectionism and things like that. And I think that when you take that into adulthood, into your professional life, you can really trip up on that. Because what you learn in business, on the one hand, I've made lifelong friends through my business. And for about 20 years, there was literally no divide between my personal life and my professional life. Literally, my team, my assistants, my co-workers and my company, once we built a company, every friend I ever had, they were all in fashion. They were all through fashion. They were all in the business. We're all... And then being very candid,

I was not supported by women throughout my career. I really wasn't. And I know that now it's really cool to be kind and supportive and lift each other up. But it wasn't then and certainly not in the fashion industry. And I have often described my career as swimming against the current, swimming upstream. I always have that visual of like, whatever fish that is that goes that way, it goes up instead of with. And with every success, I met, you know, sort of a woman who wanted to ruin it for me or take it down or. And so I think that I do heavily believe in karma. I would say that being too nice, I really, like I said,

is equivalent to being naive about people. And I think that I was very foolish to think the best of people in situations where they clearly did not have good intentions. And I think that very often that toughening up and getting that thicker skin comes with experience because you don't want it to change who you are as a person. You don't want to become this like cynical hater, but you do have to have 10 eyes open about who people are. You have to try and really get a sense for who people are in your life and try and draw sometimes

a healthy line between your coworkers and friends. Many of us have had bad bosses in our careers, in many cases, terrible bosses. In today's job market where employees have tons of choices and job hopping is more common than ever, how important is it to our future success to learn to deal with adversity at work? It's very important to deal with adversity. Listen, I think in how we're raising our kids now, you know, it's funny, there's a lot of parents I hear talking about, oh, our kids never lose or they never, they get accolades even when they don't do well or like things like that. And I think that it's an ongoing conversation about kind of really learning throughout your

childhood and then your adolescence. And then when you become an adult, how to deal with adversity. I do think a lot of these things come from experience. And I think that learning how to deal with adversity is really important because you are going to have it. You're going to have it at every turn. No matter what you do, there will be different degrees of adversity. You just will. And I think that if you can start to really vet what things are worth your reactivity to a situation, I think that's better. And again, I think that comes with age.

That comes with experience. I think so much of how to deal with these situations comes with time, really. I think confidence grows over time because it's experience. Anything new still gives you butterflies. I always say like, if I'm not getting nervous about something, it means it's time to do something else. In 2005, you started working with Nicole Ritchie, the daughter of Lionel Ritchie, a very famous four-time Grammy award-winning musician who has sold more than- I feel like he's like a 25-time Grammy award-winning. You're probably right,

but in my mind, I feel like he's won like 50 of them. He's won four, but he's been nominated, I believe, for over 20. That sounds right. He sold over 100 million albums in his career. When Nicole hired you,

she was mainly known for co-starring with Paris Hilton in the reality TV show The Simple Life, which ran for four seasons, was essentially about the lives of two young, wealthy socialites who came from famous families. There were many who thought Nicole had no talent whatsoever,

but she was young and attractive and rich. And she had a rising profile with the tabloids. The paparazzi loved taking pictures of her. And you made sure she never looked drab and was dressed to impress, like wearing something low-key with a killer accessory when she went from one hotspot to another in LA. At this point in your career, you were a star yourself, and you had an enormous impact on the careers of many of your clients, including Nicole, who you helped turn her into a star. At that point, you had so much influence that your style can turn an ordinary encounter with an up-and-coming actress into a front-page fashion scoop. And for that promising young actress, these out-of-bed pictures or out-at-a-hot-spot pictures would turn into several hundred thousand dollar endorsement

deals from the designers who in turn saw huge increases in sales from whatever these celebs were wearing. At that point in time, did you realize the enormous power and influence you had? And if so, did you think about the responsibilities that came with it? I definitely did. I took a lot of my clients on as if I was their older sister, their mother. Very often, something my husband always says, I didn't look at styling as a job that I was waking up for and doing. I looked at it as my whole being and who I was as a person. And I approached every client with so much emotion and such a personal investment and really taking care of them, really just looking after them, really trying to transform their images in a way that was more

reflective of who they were. And, you know, I didn't do that for everybody, for all my clients, but I think there were certain clients that really allowed me to do what I do and just love to play dress up and really do the whole thing. And that meant whether they were going to the movies, going to dinner, going to get a coffee, whatever they were doing in their lives, it wasn't just about a red carpet moment. You know, and then I had other clients that when they weren't on the red carpet, they wanted no part of it. They wanted to wear overalls and a t-shirt and converse. So I think it was for me very much about taking people to the next level because I never looked at dressing people as a superficial thing. I looked at it as trying to be transformative for them. Honestly, like not just outside looking

in, but really just helping to really shape who they are inside. Because I just always looked at styling as this incredible form of expression and who you are and who you wanted to put out in the world. And I think as public figures, people weren't hearing what they were saying. They were just looking at pictures of them. So I think it's sort of like, okay, this is my vibe. This is who I am. And ultimately, how you look on the outside is very much reflective of who you are on the inside and sort of your mood and where you are in your life and who you want to put out there in the world every day. The power and fame also comes with a downside. And I want to come back to Nicole for a minute. She was very thin.

Many called her anorexic. And the press accused you of being widely responsible for her widely reported weight loss and setting a trend for size zero bodies. The Los Angeles Times wrote that you were single-handedly bringing back anorexia. You and Nicole had become close friends. And in 2006, the press reported that you participated in an intervention aimed at helping her to overcome her eating disorder. She fired you. And then she wrote a very nasty post on her MySpace page accusing you of having your own eating disorder. You took the high road. You responded that you work with women of all shapes and sizes and you wish Nicole

only health and happiness and you did in fact, have an eating disorder. That could not have been fun, and I'm sure it was very upsetting and embarrassing. At some point, the more successful we become, the more likely it is that people will criticize some aspect of what we're doing. And the higher our profile is, the greater the scrutiny and likelihood of increased criticism. On Sunday night, before Will Smith won the Oscar for Best Actor, Denzel Washington said to Will at your highest moment, be careful, that's when the devil comes for you. On our path to excellence, what's your advice to others on how to deal with criticism,

some of which may be deserved and some of which may not be deserved? And does dealing with criticism in the right way help you become a more effective leader and a better role model to others? I mean, it's a loaded thing. Listen, in that time period, it was like at the height of the tabloid movement. I think now those are pretty much dead. I mean, I haven't looked at a tabloid and honestly, I can't even remember when. I was able to get through those moments in a ton of pain, but I was able to get through those moments because of the family that I have and the clients that I had that anywhere from a size zero to 10, some pregnant, some, you know, like just going through all these different moments in their lives. And then being like, Rachel, you can't let things that are the complete opposite of what's true take you down. They're like, we know you.

Everyone in your life knows you. You've never done a drug in your life. You absolutely do not have an eating disorder. You do nothing but feed us when we come. You don't let us leave if we don't eat. Like you have muffins out, you have this, that, like the other thing. And they're like, it's like for anybody who knows you, they know this is the most ridiculous thing that anyone could ever say. So all you ever have to care about is the people that actually know you. Because these people have never met you,

they don't know you, and they're passing judgment and creating something that actually has no truth to it, that actually has no factual truth to it. And they're like, so you just have to move on and laugh at it. But because I'm not an actor, and because I'm not, wasn't a celebrity in the traditional sense, I was a celebrity by mistake. The press just sort of pulled me into that because they were curious about who was behind the looks of so many people. And so they started digging into it. For me, getting through those moments with a very strong family and very strong clients and very strong friends and mentors like Marc Jacobs and people that have been through different

things in the industry, I think listening to their sort of insight and words of wisdom was really just monumentally helpful and impactful for me. And I think when you can't really see outside of a bad situation, if you don't have those people that can help you see that you respect and follow and admire, it's very hard to get out of it. I take things very personally and very deeply, and it was very painful. It was sort of like when something is such a polar opposite of reality, you're so like shook about how could someone ever say something like, like, how is that even possible that someone could say that? And you start to really see this whole other side of the industry. And it makes you really look at things differently. And I think at

that point, I never looked at a tabloid again because I was so sort of like, wow, this is all just a bed of lies. I think it's really hard to be strong in those moments. But I think if you don't have strong people around you that are positive, it's very hard to get out of that, honestly. And I think it is important to take a step back and realize what was helpful for me was to think about who was writing these things and how miserable they probably are in their own lives, that they have to try and take down innocent people. And that's fun for them. So I think that, to me, was very helpful. I want to switch gears and talk about what makes people successful. And I want to start by talking about the perception of what we do versus the reality of what we do. You never wanted to be famous, but you are famous. And everybody thinks your job is all glamorous. You hang out with

celebs and amazing designers. You go to amazing parties. You make lots of money. But it's not all glamorous. Most people don't really think about your day-to-day and the actual work or know how being a stylist is really a behind-the-scenes job. You're there to fluff clients' trains and hold their handbags and make sure they have chapstick, limp brushes, and snacks on hand. It's a service business,

and you're there to provide a service. I'm 53. I've had some success, and if I had to put a number on it, I would say that at least 75% of my day is comprised of doing very menial, very boring tasks, things that are not exciting, but which are essential to my businesses. When I got out of grad school almost 30 years ago, things were very different than they are now. College graduates today are much more entitled than when we were in school,

and many don't want to do the grum work. And they want to be promoted by like six months in, they want like a senior title. Happens every time that we have a new employee. But despite my success and your success, we still do it. What's your advice to the younger generation who are growing up in a world of overnight social media sensations with millions of followers. In the real world, how do they achieve success? God, it's funny. I've done a lot of interviews with young people like this, and it's a hard thing because you have to do the work. People can see through it. That whole fake it till you make it thing, you're doing yourself a disservice by not working hard from the beginning because you miss a lot.

It's the little things. It's the nuances. For me, it was like boot camp. It was like I was doing the job of 10 people and it was fine. One, because I loved it. Two, because I kind of wanted to control all the aspects of it, which I still do. And three, because I learned so much. And it's like those intensive investment banking programs. You're never going to meet someone in those programs that's like, yes, I'm living for it.

I'm having the best time. Like Roger hated it, my husband. But he would tell you, he has used every single bit of it pretty much every day of his career. I think it's in those moments. It may not be the most fun thing you've ever done in the moment, but do the work. It will help you so much along the way. I really just think being humble goes a long way. The minute I interview someone that I feel is entitled and arrogant, it's like we don't even get halfway through the interview. It's just over because those are like red flags. I think when you're interviewing people and the first thing they ask you is like, do we have flex days? How many vacation days? How many this? Can I work from home?

It's like those are the red flags. For me, I want to hire people that are passionate, driven, and just want to do the work. I mean, how do you feel about that? Things have really changed. I talk about this with a lot of my successful friends, and I'm 53. I know you're close in age. I'm 40. 40, okay. Just turned 40 last September. Happy birthday. And we get questions like this on a regular basis. People don't want to come to work right now. And I don't know how you can build a company without the DNA of people working together in the same room towards the same goals. You just can't do it. And yet people want to do it. On the tech side, it took us six months to find a replacement of someone we had to fire

for being racist six months ago. And they all wanted to work from home. And I said, how are you going to be a critical member of our team? We do have people who come in, they want more vacation days, they want all kinds of things. It's a buyer's market if you're someone looking for a job right now. And I don't care what business you're in. If you're in the trucking business, service business, any business, you can't hire people right now.

I agree. So I share similar thoughts to you. I want to talk about the importance of preparation on our path to excellence. One of the main ingredients that got me to where I am today is that I'm always the most prepared person in the room. How important has preparation been to your success? Going a step further, how important is extreme preparation? I'm talking about going way and beyond what would be considered regularly great preparation. I'm talking about the kind of preparation you spend 30 or 40 hours on for a single event or meeting. It's such a good question, honestly. And it's the thing that I

actually stand by as being probably the most important part of my career. And my team would probably say the biggest differentiator between myself and some others. And that when I would start working with a client, they would come in and say, I've never experienced anything like this. And I was like, I don't understand what you mean. Because obviously, I didn't work with other stylists, right? So I didn't know what they were comparing it to. And they would just say, like, if I was coming in for a look, I'd have six options. And I refuse to ever have less than 40 to get to one. And so when I was doing Backstreet Boys and stuff, I mean, there were five of them. I would literally have 50 racks

of clothing because they each needed five looks. There was 10 shots like da da da. But ultimately, I always use the example, I would get hired for these ad jobs, right? That would pay me the most money. And it was the least creative. And it would be like, okay, she needs to wear a white t-shirt and jeans. Okay. So you might bring in, I don't know, three t-shirts, four pairs of jeans, maybe see which ones fit. I would 100% have 40 pairs of jeans of every wash, of every length, of every possible type of denim you could have. I would have every variation on a white t-shirt from ivory to stark white to crewnecks, v-necks, tank tops, ruffles on the sleeves, like you name it, I would have it.

Because nine times out of 10, they would change the direction. And when they changed the direction, I had what they needed. Because there's nothing that it was worse for me than being in the middle of nowhere on a job. We actually changed. We actually want to do like a navy blue or an off-the-shoulder white instead of just a basic t-shirt. And then you're in the middle of nowhere. Where on earth am I getting this? Where is this actually

happening? And those moments for me were like, it was like that panic. Like I felt like this is on me. Why don't I have this? I'm not prepared. And that was a feeling that I never wanted to be familiar with. And it created 10 times more work for everybody. My assistants would bitch and moan, pardon my French, but they would be like, why do you need this, Rachel? It's a white tank top they need. That's it. It's going to be waist up. You know what, guys? Go work for someone else. This is how I roll. You know this is how I roll. And then always the same thing with a gown. Like they thought they wanted one thing. They would tell me, oh, I'm feeling like a black long dress with a train. And they'd end up in a short pink cocktail dress. So for me, it was like making people step outside their comfort zone and having those options there to do so,

but also having what they ask for. And I think preparation to me is actually the most important part of what I do in every aspect, everything I do. I will say this, I don't prepare for things like this. And the reason is, is because I like to wing it because I'm much better at speaking from the heart or just instinctually just responding and being conversational than I am like writing a script or taking notes or

things like that. So whenever I give a speech or anything like that, I'm just like, no. Or whenever I'm on a show or anything like that, I don't like to meet the person before. I like it to be very organic. But I think as it pertains to any other aspect, 100% over-prepare. Your assistant asked me to send over a list of questions. I hope you get... Pardon me? I didn't look at them. Well, I didn't give them and I never do.

Oh, good. Because I didn't look at them. Because I want people to react naturally to my questions and I don't want things to be scripted. Same. Even on my TV show, they would always say, oh, do you want to have an intro to so-and-so? You're going to see them in this episode. I'd be like, no, I want to walk in and it be actually real in real time. Just a note to our listeners and viewers, I believe, and it sounds like you do too, preparation also includes proactive

thinking for things that could be different. You have to adapt to the situation when you're there and plan also, not only for more options, but for things to go wrong. Always. So my team says, don't be so negative. I'm like, this is not negative. This is realistic. This is being prepared. This is how I've gotten through every part of my life, is I always play out worst case scenario and how to prepare for that. Always, always, always in anything I do. We talked about preparation being important to your success.

We've talked about passion. What are the three to five additional ingredients to success in your view? I think one I mentioned earlier, which is never get complacent with where you are. Always know that you can do better and be better. I think not ever being driven by your ego because you will trip up on that.

I think really try to surround yourself with people that you know truly support you and really try to also recognize this is one of my best learnings. And again, advice from my dad as an entrepreneur, you have to really know your strengths and really recognize your challenges and be okay with it. No one is amazing at everything. They're just not. As human beings, we're just not designed that way. And I think the minute you recognize or can really find some kind of comfort in knowing what you're best at and what you're not, and then really hire people around you that can really fill those sort of challenges.

Then you end up really being the perfect balance because you complement each other. I mean, my husband and I are co-COs and we do such different things. We're getting there right now. And I want to talk about Roger. The two of you met in the summer of 1991. You were 19. He was 22. You're both working at

a restaurant in Washington, D.C. You were a college at GW. He was getting his MBA there. You were a hostess. He was a waiter. The first time he saw you, you were wearing a tight black mini dress, high-heeled pumps. You had thick, straight hair. Your lips were covered in MAC chili lipstick, which became one of your trademarks. When he saw you, he said that you were the most beautiful woman you had ever seen. And he also said that he quickly learned that you had more clothes than any woman he had ever met and that he often wondered if you would do an outfit change mid-date. You were married seven years later. You were wearing a custom Isaac Mizrahi dress, which is a white replica of a red version

of the supermodel Amber Valletta. Valletta had worn on a magazine cover. And as another interesting fact, you and Roger are huge Grateful Dead fans. You've been to more than 30 shows. He's been to more than 90. And the two of you walked down the aisle to their song Truckin'. When you met, the two of you fantasized that you would open a restaurant instead. As we talked about, Roger worked as an investment banker for eight years.

And when he left, he started a company called Recognition Media, which owned, produced media shows and programs and events. Today, he runs your companies with you. You've given him a ton of credit for your success. You've said that you are nothing without him. I don't know many couples who could work together. My wife and I certainly could not do that. I love her more than anything. She's way more laid back than I am, but we'd kill each other. You've created something special together, but at the same time, it's not perfect. You said the hardest thing about working with him is he talks over everybody sometimes. He talks too much and you have to figure out in a polite way to tell him to stop talking and let some other people speak. It's awesome,

but like everything, it's not perfect. What's your secret to working together? And in a world where 50% of all couples get divorced, do you recommend getting into business with your spouse or significant other? The answer is I don't know that I'd ever recommend it. I don't know that I'd ever recommend it, although I do know a handful of spouses that work together, couples that work together. And it really does work. I think that the success of it partly is because we do very different things. He really lets me do my thing. I really let him do his thing. There are certain things that we overlap with. And I would say he's certainly a creative person. I have really over the last 10 years become much more financially savvy and, you know, in terms of investing and advising and all

of that type of stuff. But I think at the end of the day, we really respect what we each do and pre-pandemic very separately. And then I think in pandemic, obviously more together at home. But I think what happened was as a stylist, my business kept growing in all different directions. And I'm such a control person. I think for me, it was so hard at one point to really just manage it all. It really was. And I had been burned by various people that I trusted. And I think at that point, I had never... We're so close. We really grew up together. Honestly, I've been with him more than half of my life. And so I think that I never made a really major decision without him being involved. Business decision, not like styling decisions, not

everyday things, but big decisions we always made as a couple. And so ultimately what happened was he would, he started to help me sort of just as my husband just was like helping me with the sort of like business side of it. There was no way that I could possibly manage it because we had so many expenses and business. It was just getting too much. And so he started to formally work with me, I think around when we launched the Zoe report and, you know, him coming off running the Webby awards and all of these amazing things and corporate finance, investment banking, the whole thing, it just started to like take shape where we just started working together. And again, like he had my best interests

at heart. And I think that for me, it ultimately came down to, it's funny, I don't think we ever formally sat down and said, okay, we're partners. I think it just happened organically. I don't advise it because most people won't survive it. I think that our dynamic has always been very like Lucy and Ricky. And I can absolutely bite his head off about something and he'll have a tantrum about something or he'll say, I don't know this. And I'll say, you don't know what you're talking about and blah, blah, blah. And then three minutes later, it'll be like, okay, who's getting the kids? What are we having for dinner? And I will say this, the gift of it really, as people who had children later in life, we really set up our life that we could take them wherever we traveled together. We didn't leave each other. We made

family decisions, family business trips. And I think that for me was a really beautiful thing because we weren't living these entirely separate lives. And I think sometimes that can be the demise of a relationship where you just live completely separate lives. I have friends that leave their husbands for like three weeks to go travel to Europe and this and that and their kids. And it's not an easy thing to do. It's easy when you're in your 20s, but it's not an easy thing to do, I think, later when you have young kids at home. So I think those things actually, for that, it's really a gift. So I think there's mostly pros. I think a few cons because we're kind of never not thinking about work. But to be honest, even if he wasn't my co-CEO, I would never not

stop thinking about work. I think that's just me. You've done so many impressive things in your career, way too many to discuss here. But can you tell us about the greatest moment of your career and how it's related to people going through chemotherapy or going through a very hard time in their lives or that just had a baby and are trying to put their lives back together? Well, I think for me, there was this real weak moment right after 9-11, going way back, where I had watched it happen from my balcony in the West Village, live in real time. And as I said, I feel things very deeply. I think everyone reacted to that very differently. And I think for me, it really impacted me in such an intense way on a very deep level. And I think, you know, I had just come off a very late night from a Marc Jacobs fashion show that was on the pier the night before.

And I think you go from living this like high of your life, right? Like, I love my life. I'm so blessed. And then to watching that happen. The way that it really hit me the most sort of after I got over the actual, I don't even know if I ever got over. I don't know if you ever get over it. But I literally, I remember so clearly saying, I quit. I quit my job. I quit styling. I'm not doing this. This means nothing. This is so superficial. This is the dumbest thing. What am I doing? I'm dressing people. These people are on the ground. They're saving lives. They're

social workers, teachers. It really upset me on a very deep level that I was making so much money for what I did at such a young age. And yet teachers and social workers and people working for nonprofits and things were just making nothing. And they were changing lives. They were helping people. And I was like, what is this crazy? And what am I doing? And I started to turn down some of the biggest job offers of my career for months, months, months. Nope, nope, nope. Done, done, done. What am I doing next?

I'm going to do what I set out to do. I'm going to work, be a social worker, psychiatrist, whatever. And then this friend of mine at the time who was actually like a neurologist and she was working in one of the hospitals and she came up to me and she was like, okay, I need you to help me. I can't function as it like, I can't feel good about myself. I can't, I've just seen so much darkness. I need you to help me get out and give me some light. I need to put myself back out in the world and whatever.

And I said, I'm not doing this anymore. I quit. And she said, you can't quit. I said, well, I don't do anything meaningful. And she said, what are you talking about? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. I was like, Susie, I don't do anything meaningful. I dress people.

And she was like, that's literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You actually change lives. You change how people feel about themselves. She's like, you've helped people literally get out of darkness. You're transforming how they look and feel about themselves, people that are under depression, people, whatever. And I went to this work event in Las Vegas shortly after that. And this woman came over to me and she said, I just want to thank you.

And I was like, for, she's like, you've changed my life. She's like, I've been going through cancer. I've been watching your TV show. I've been reading your book. She's like, and you now make me want to actually like do my life, like get out of bed. You make me want to like live for something. You make me want to like this, that. And I would hear these stories over and over and over about like women waiting to greet

their husbands from getting home from the military and women who were through Hurricane Katrina and couldn't get their life back together. And so I started to really feel like I had this much deeper purpose in what I was doing. And it was this real inflection point for me. And that's when I wanted to start helping as many women as possible really try and live their absolute best lives

on a much deeper level and trying to empower them in a much deeper and bigger way. And that's when I launched the Star Report. That's when I started to write my books. That's when I started to do a million other things that I was doing because I was trying to figure out how I could touch as many women as possible at all points of their lives. That's how I can say it in a nutshell. I want to talk about philanthropy, which I know is extremely important to you. You're an ambassador for Save the Children, a 100-year-old organization that operates in over 100 countries and champions the rights of the world's 2.3 billion children. You're also on the board of

the awesome organization Baby to Baby, which provides children living in poverty with basic necessities that every child deserves and which has distributed more than 175 million items in the last 10 years. Honor Path to Excellence, how important is giving back and helping those who are less fortunate? I look at philanthropy as probably my favorite part of my jobs. It's something you have to do. It's not something that is like a luxury to do. If you can, it is one of the most important things to ever do. And empathy is the number one thing that as a parent, I have set out to teach my children from the youngest age to try and make them understand what it means. And cancer and children have been my chosen causes because there's a million that I want

to do and be a part of and things that I am a part of in other ways. But baby to baby, save the children. These are organizations that have such tremendous impact. There's no limit to what they can do if they have the funds to do it. And I think that there's no power worth having, in my opinion, if you don't use that power for good. And I think to have a voice and not use it in a way that you can help others, especially children, to me, it's not excusable. It's not excusable. And I think philanthropy, to the extent that you can do it and touch it on even the smallest level, if you can, there's just so much need in the world, especially now, that I just think if you don't do it, I'd like to understand why you don't. I challenge you. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended, simple questions. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play?

Oh, God. Yes. When I started my career, I wish the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play? Oh, God. Yes. When I started my career, I wish I had known. That I could be good. I wish I had known to believe in myself. I think the four most powerful words in the English language are I believe in you. Yeah. It's a great motivator.

It is. I genuinely believe, you know, listen, it took me to hear Tommy Hilfiger to say that to me, for me to actually feel confident enough to do the job. I was like, oh, okay, you think I can do it? Okay, great. My number one professional goal is? To just keep doing my absolute best and to get better. My number one personal goal is? Honestly, my number one personal goal is that I raise incredible children with a great moral code because they have it now and you just hope it stays. My biggest regret is? Trusting people I shouldn't have trusted.

The one person in the world that I admire the most is? My dad. The best advice I've ever learned is? So much. Lead with kindness. My favorite designer in the world is? Chanel. The three celebrities that I've worked with and like the most are? Ooh, that's tough. That's like picking a favorite child. Brad Pitt, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Garner, all. The one person in the world that I haven't styled but want to is? Angelina Jolie. That would be fun. Other than you, my favorite stylist is?

Karine Reutfeld. She was the editor of French Vogue. Now she has CR, but she's a legend. She's just an absolute legend. If you could meet one person in the world, who would it be? Michelle Obama or Oprah. The one question that you wish I had asked you but didn't is? You're definitely the most prepared person I've ever been interviewed by.

I will say that. You clearly did your research. And it's very helpful, by the way, because it saves a lot of time. And it's a lot of, like I said, I think it's one of the most important things. It's such a good question, because it's weirdly one I haven't been asked. And it's something that I think was really the biggest differentiator in my career, honestly. Do you have any last advice for those listening and watching today? And is there anything you're working on that you'd like to promote to our listeners and viewers today?

I would say Curator, our incredible luxury shopping membership program is really just something you absolutely don't want to miss. Your wife will want it for sure. And you just have to go check it out. Look at the Instagram at Curator or online, of course, Curator.com. But it's something you definitely want to be a member of. I mean, it's $9.99 to get a shop membership and find everything that I've curated and could buy things for yourself and everyone in your life. So I think that's incredible. And plus, of course, you get the seasonal curation of things I've chosen for every season. So I think that's amazing. And then I have a lot of stuff coming out,

but I can send you all that. I have a lot of stuff I'm working on. I'm working on a new TV show. I have a podcast, Works For Us. And I could go on, but I don't want to bore you guys. Rachel, you've been an incredible role model to millions of people, and I brought incredible happiness to tens of millions of people who love you. I'm very grateful for your time today. Thank you very much for sharing your incredible story and inspirational story with us. Thanks for having me. Bye.