Rachel arrived in New York and fussed with the final touches to the collection.  Jessica Iredale from Women’s Wear Daily arrived for a private preview.  Zoe described the collection to Iredale and not-so-subtly dropped the sex of her unborn child in the mix.  Interesting PR strategy.Overall, the color in the collection is off.  The camel isn’t quite right.  The gold buttons are a bit too garish.  It does feel very Studio 54 Halston-y and therefore true to Rachel’s aesthetic.  The larger problem is that her viewpoint is predictable and one-note.We all agree that creatively Zoe isn’t in the same stratosphere as Alexander Wang, right?  Put it this way – you’ve got $400 bucks are you gonna buy Wang, or are you going to buy the Rachel Zoe Collection?  Ask Lauren fucking Conrad.

Zoe themed with clichés like “the Parisian Girl” and “the London Girl” and “the Uptown Chic Girl.”  The buyers and editors humored her.  Nobody’s gonna to tell a pregnant woman her debut collection sucks, even in this cut-throat fashist crowd.The lemming buyers must have liked what they saw because more than one high-end department store scooped up the collection.  A QVC sell-through is one thing, but can Rachel attract a high-end shopper?  In Zoe’s case, what she lacks in design talent she overcompensates for in reality show exposure.  We’ll see how the collection sells with its well-timed commercial release.