<\/p>\n
To hear her tell it, Rachel Zoe never meant for all this to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccidentally famous,\u201d she said last week in her hotel room at the Mercer hotel in New York. \u201cTruthfully.\u201d<\/p>\n
And yet there she was, surrounded by the trappings of fame: swathed in a white cotton robe, basking in the glow of a ring light while a makeup artist applied dabs of foundation to her face, which was framed by tousled waves of honey-colored hair, and surrounded by racks of dresses and fur coats with vertiginous black heels neatly lined up underneath. All this in preparation for her to attend the Michael Kors fashion show that afternoon at Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a behind-the-scenes person my whole life,\u201d she said. \u201cI became a stylist so that I could be behind the scenes. I\u2019m the person who got offered the lead in a play and then asked for a supporting role.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cOr,\u201d she added, \u201clike, the tree in the back.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Ms. Zoe did, in fact, become famous. She is known, arguably, as the first celebrity stylist \u2014 not the first person to style celebrities, but as a stylist whose own profile matched (and, at times, eclipsed) that of the starlets she dressed. She cemented this reputation with her reality TV show \u201cThe Rachel Zoe Project,\u201d<\/a> which ran on the Bravo network starting in 2008. On it, she sat front-row at fashion shows, air-kissed household-name designers, called in frocks from luxury brands for her A-list clients to wear to high-profile events and shopped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Boy, did she ever shop. (An unofficial tagline on the show was \u201cI die,\u201d<\/a> a common response to seeing a particularly fetching item while browsing a designer store.)<\/p>\n We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n