This summer, I attended Etro’s summer dinner in collaboration with Fashion Trust U.S. My mom was supposed to be my date, but when a last-minute conflict arose, she was unable to attend. At first, I hesitated. Should I still go? I knew I would be the only teenager there. But then I heard my mom’s voice in my head: If you never ask, the answer is always no. So, I went to the dinner and introduced myself to Rachel Zoe, fashion mogul, stylist, businesswoman, mother, and host of Climbing in Heels, a podcast where she interviews successful women in various industries, from fashion to wellness to business.
As a young girl growing up in Short Hills, New Jersey, Rachel was “obsessed” with glamor and beauty, she told me. Only a 30-minute drive from New York City, she would find herself mesmerized by the window displays on Madison Avenue or the details of a woman’s outfit as she walked by. “I was pulled towards whatever it was that was beautiful,” Rachel said. “And I didn't know that you could make a career out of that.”
After graduating from George Washington University, where she studied psychology, Rachel landed a job at YM, a lifestyle and fashion magazine for teenage girls. She worked twenty-four-seven, taking on as many days as possible despite her meager paychecks. Describing herself as “ambitious and starry-eyed,” she showed up to work each morning with the intention of being the best. “I was sitting in a fashion closet, packing trunks, and doing all this stuff that, in hindsight, was probably torture,” said Rachel. “But I lived for it.” Once, her father called to check in about her new job. When he expressed worry about her income, she responded, “Dad, I'm doing this forever. I'm doing this ‘till I’m dead. I'm never not doing this. And I don't care if no one pays me.”
Although she thrived at YM, she soon realized the stagnancy of the fashion magazine industry: fashion editors rarely left positions at Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, for example. Meanwhile, she began helping friends on fashion shoots as a freelance stylist. Suddenly, she realized she could do it all on her own. At twenty-five, she quit her job to work for herself. “In hindsight, that was insane,” Rachel said. But she quickly found success as a stylist: her client roster grew to include the Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, Jessica Simpson, and Britney Spears.
Rachel attributes her entrepreneurial spirit to her father and strong-mindedness to her mother. Navigating the worlds of styling, music, and Hollywood, Rachel had to learn how to advocate for herself in male-dominated business spaces. “As a woman, you were immediately perceived as difficult,” said Rachel. “But if a man was saying anything, they would be like a boss.” Starting out, she struggled to self-advocate, but as she progressed in her career and gained confidence, she learned to stand up for herself and others, saying “Hey, you had no say in that” or “you can't talk to me that way.”
Rachel also described the experience of being ‘mean-girled,’ a term she deployed for experiences where other women resented her success and rooted for her failure. Her career, where male executives devalued her business acumen and women aimed to tear her down, exemplifies the double-bind successful women experience. Through her podcast, Rachel attempts to break down this ‘scarcity mindset’ among successful women. She also espouses her belief in practicing empathy in all areas of life, even in business. “I don't think women should ever be afraid to show their empathy,” said Rachel. “Because I don't really believe in the, ‘Well, this is business.’ That's not the way I approach anything. I always approach it with heart.”
Having been “mean-girled,” Rachel sought to overturn the competitive narrative among professional women by creating a space to uplift each woman’s unique journeys to success through her podcast, Climbing in Heels. Rachel says her podcast, Climbing in Heels, is about “embracing the power of being a woman and whatever that means, whether it's heels, whether it's a voice, whether it's your brain, whether it's empathy.” The podcast’s title evokes the pressures of being in business as a woman, whether that be navigating motherhood or misogynistic microaggressions in the office. Her interviewees span many industries, like entrepreneur Kim Perrell, fashion model Poppy Delevingne, and jewelry designer Jennifer Fisher. While each interviewee comes from vastly different backgrounds, Rachel noted that at least 50 percent were raised by single mothers. She attributes this statistic to the experience of observing their mothers’ resilience, which in turn instilled a self-reliance for them to forge their own paths.
When asked what she would tell her younger self or other young women aspiring to achieve their dreams, Rachel said, “Mistakes are horrible in the moment, I'm not going to lie, but you have to let yourself make mistakes. Every mistake that happened, I thought my career was done,” said Rachel. “What you don't realize is that those mistakes are building your life.”
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