The Rachel Zoe Project finally abandoned it's staid format of: Rachel being busy and disagreeing with Rodger while Skyler runs around in some fabulous onesie for the first 40 minutes, with the last 20 minutes being about some super fun photo shoot that Rachel just doesn't have time for. The latest episode was just got a nicely paced show about Rachel's generally fabulous and busy life as a working woman with a son that dresses better than every male ever featured on Your LL Bean Boyfriend and off-the-red carpet Anne Hathaway. Rachel is also feeling strained by her bicoastal lifestyle and the never-ending construction on her New York blow dry. Is she fabulous? Yes. A giant lesson in impracticality? Most definitely. And now, a numbered list of the latest episode's most impractical moments, for your convenience.
1. Rachel wants a giant apartment in New York so that when she goes to New York to work out of her office there she has a place to leave her toothbrush.
Or, if you believe Rodger, she just wants the apartment so that she doesn't have to worry about hotel reservations. (Because those are so time-consuming and stress-inducing, especially when you're on Rachel's insanely tight budget, you know. (???)) Rodger is afraid to even go look for a place because he knows that Rachel is going to want a mansion made of solid white gold and Missoni throw pillows, and he doesn't want to spend the money on it.
I would also like to point out that Rodger vented his feelings about this potential real estate acquisition to one of his hair-geled bros over white wine and blood orange-colored cocktails and what looked like small plates of dainty tapas or antipasti. Is he single handedly keeping the metrosexual movement alive or is he single handedly keeping the metrosexual movement alive?
2. Rachel has "six hundred coats" but can only wear two in L.A.
She tells this to her shoe team, who flies into L.A. for a day to get Rachel's feedback on prototypes of the new shoe collection. Rachel apologizes for asking them to make the trip, to which one of the New York women replies (and I paraphrase), "are you kidding? People wear sundresses here. FUCK COATS!" Because seriously, after a month or two of cold, coat weather is the worst, no matter how much mileage it lets you get our of your 80 fur chubbies. But maybe when you don't have to be outside for longer than it takes to walk from a car into a building you may as well be impervious to the elements. Because elements are for plebeians. That's how it goes in the upper echelon of fashion people, right? Right.
3. If Rachel had a choice, "every one of [the Rachel Zoe Collection's] shoes would be on a nine-inch platform heel."
Because Rachel is petite and that's all she wears, even to chase her little boy around the merry-go-round. She also thinks it's "ironic" that her line's best sellers are flats. What Rachel doesn't know is that's not irony at work, it's the comfort of the general public. But again, when you never have to be outside for longer than it takes to walk from a chauffered vehicle to a building, you're probably impervious to discomfort — which is also a totally plebeian pastime.
4. Rodger gives Mandanna a chocolate Eiffel tower as a consolation prize for not being able to go with them to Paris.
This is impractical on so many levels. One, you don't introduce CHOCOLATE to an all-white office with a brand new white shag carpet that looks like it could come alive and eat someone at any moment. Two, you don't introduce chocolate to a fashion office period. Like, fashion office employees are notoriously self-conscious about choices they have to make in front of each other about food because weirdness about food is part of fashion culture (it's part of the reason food at fashion parties is always maddeningly tiny). Three, you don't bring back an awkwardly gigantic model of the Eiffel tower because how the hell do you pack that thing? What about temperature control in the air so that it doesn't melt? Do you get it its own first class seat next to Skyler? The questions go on and on.
5. Rachel wears black to her Dream Dry construction site after she's been told you can't wear black to a construction site unless you want to emerge gray.
To her credit, she wears a leopard coat. Also points for Bravo for queuing the ominous music when the maybe-incompetent Dream Dry lady tells her she "can't wear black." (In other words: #Apocalypse.) Ironically Skyler is the most appropriately dressed for the occasion in his oatmeal-colored cable knit sweater with attached leggings.
6. Skyler the baby is trained in footwear selection.
When Rachel goes on a shopping spree in the Brian Atwood store, where all the shoes are basically on a nine-inch platform and therefore perfect for maybe only her, she asks Skyler which of two shoes he likes. Without thinking, as though it just comes to him naturally because he has styling in his blood, he lifts his index finger and places it on the glittery one and delivers his verdict: "sparkly!"
7. RZ's spawn gets animal crackers served to him on a silver tray.
Most adults go their entire lives without being treated that well in shoe stores. But also, many adults do not behave nearly as well when watching someone try on 50 pairs of shoes.
8. Rachel dresses herself in terms of "story."
Rodger asks Rachel how many coats she'd wear a week if she lived in New York, and she decides seven, and then rattles off all the styles she'd need, like a gray one so that she could do a "story" — as in, what you'd call a shoot she styles for a fashion magazine — with platinum and golds. Of course she doesn't just wear "outfits." She wears stories. Important distinction!
9. Rodger teaches his son to say "gorgeous."
Obviously a highly important part of any L.A.-based Bravolebrity's son's vocabulary. One can only assume "maj" is already part of his semi-comprehensible toddler babble.
10. When Rachel views apartments all she can think about is which bedroom would become her closet.
The places they look at buying had to be at around $10 million, though there is one five bedroom apartment listed on Street Easy for a suuuuuper reasonable $125 million. That's about the cost of what, one Brian Atwood shopping trip? One point five Brian Atwood shopping trips? Something like that.
Anyway, Rachel sees one huge (by New York standards) apartment that has three bedrooms (again: huge by New York standards) which means that "one can be a closet," Rachel reasons. "That's part of the reason I moved to L.A. — I need more closets." Despite the gorgeousness of the place that had five bedrooms, 3,700 square feet of interior space, and 4,000 square feet of outdoor space, Rodger somehow convinces Rachel that they don't need it. It was maybe the only practical moment of the episode. Rachel moves on from the loss quickly deciding her next project doesn't need to be decorating a New York apartment so that she has a place to store her electric toothbrush — it needs to be making a baby girl.