NEW YORK — Dressing Hollywood’s “It” girls is no longer enough for stylist Rachel Zoe.
Zoe has become a designer, creating a handbag collection in collaboration with Judith Leiber that will launch at retail this fall. The collection is the first of Zoe’s design ambitions. She is pursuing women’s apparel and other categories, although she has no firm plans.
“I’ve turned down collaborations in the past, but this whole thing just clicked,” said Zoe, citing her first meeting with Frank Zambrelli, creative director of the New York-based brand.
Zoe was in New York last week for a series of events, including dressing Lindsay Lohan for her “Saturday Night Live” host duties.
The stylist, a vegetarian, said she is obsessed with animal skins, and the line, dubbed Rachel Zoe for Judith Leiber, incorporates plenty of them. Exotic skins such as lizard, crocodile and python, among nine other materials, are used in the two silhouettes that she created with Zambrelli. The Medusa style is a pliable satchel with ruched outside pockets at the sides, woven leather or suede shoulder straps and a flap closure. The Cleopatra is an oversize, rectangular minaudière. Both bags come in about 12 color variations, including a siren red and a matte gold, and are topped off with a heavy gold fob depicting two snakes — a favorite Zoe motif — coiled around a ring.
Inspiration for the serpentine finial came from an 18th-century door knocker on a building made for Louis XVI in Paris that Zambrelli came across.
“When I saw it, I called Rachel immediately,” he said. “It even had the double L on the frieze above [for Louis XVI], but I could have sworn it said JL [for Judith Leiber].”
The bags will bow in September in Neiman Marcus, as well as in the company’s four stores in Las Vegas, Atlanta, New York and Costa Mesa, Calif. They will range in price from $2,000 to $10,000. The higher range includes bags like one the design pair affectionately calls “The Mac Daddy,” a minaudière encrusted with gold and pewter crystals that retails for $8,000.
As celebrity stylists such as Arianne Phillips, L’Wren Scott and Andrea Lieberman gain recognition for their part in establishing the personal looks for celebrities like Madonna, Nicole Richie and Jennifer Lopez, the stylist-as-designer genre is growing, said Robert Vignola, chief executive officer of Judith Leiber.
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“Stylists set fashion trends,” Vignola said. “Now they’re coming out in front of the camera a little bit and becoming celebrities themselves, and that’s a good thing. Rachel is an influencer.”
Last June, Lieberman launched a fine jewelry collection with Mouawad. Zoe is also entering the apparel business and other categories, in addition to recently signing a book deal with Warner Books about “the Sixties, Seventies and everything glamorous.” The book is to come out next spring.
Vignola said the Zoe collaboration is among Judith Leiber’s efforts to introduce the brand to a younger, hipper consumer. In past seasons the company has tapped socialites like Olivia Chantecaille, Zani Gugelman and Vanessa Getty to be in the advertising campaign. Getty, who stars in the current cavmpaign, will continue as the model for the fall ads.
The collaboration is not about dollar signs alone, Vignola said.
“At the price points the collection is set at, it’s not about driving volume,” he said. “It’s about raising people’s eyebrows. It’s more for the recognition factor.”
The 34-year-old Leiber firm has more projects in the works, including soft accessories, in fur and cashmere, as well as fine jewelry through a licensing agreement, planned to be completed in June.