At some point over the last few months, it began to feel like an assembly line: Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan ....
All of a sudden, you couldn't tell them apart: the drapey gowns clinging to skinny hips, the long blond tendrils falling over matchstick-thin arms, the smoky eyes accenting bottle-bronzed faces.
"Attack of the Clones" was the headline in Women's Wear Daily. "Lindsay Lohan's Double Visions," quipped People magazine above a photo of Lohan and Richie.
It might look like a peroxide wind is blowing through Hollywood, but there's actually a mastermind behind this look-of-the-moment: celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.
And it turns out many of her clients look just like her: wispy-thin, golden-tressed, bronzed and sexy.
Zoe -- she was Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig until her agent urged her to drop her last name -- is one of a handful of sought-after Hollywood stylists who earn up to $6,000 a day. She dresses some of the world's most visible teen idols for film junkets, premieres and magazine shoots. (Mischa Barton, Jennifer Garner, Salma Hayek, Kate Hudson and Brittany Murphy are also clients.) As such, her power as an image maker cannot be underestimated. A recent entry on a Lohan fan site read: "I would do anything to look like her!"
It's not that no one has ever done the bohemian chic look before. Kate Moss and Sienna Miller have a similar, much imitated style, mixing vintage with modern-day romantic pieces, and inspiring designers such as Chloe's Phoebe Philo and Stella McCartney. For these English style icons, fashion is effortless. But in Hollywood, women are used to walking the red carpet. They have to look "done," with every detail perfect, down to makeup and hair. So Zoe has created her own brand of studied effortless chic.
"I'm not trying to make people look like me," she said during a recent interview at her Beverly Hills apartment, which has racks of designer clothing crammed in the entryway. "But when you spend a lot of time with someone, you rub off on each other. I think I'm kind of an older sister to Lindsay and Nicole."
In fact, it's not uncommon for Zoe, 33, to dress "her girls" as she calls them, out of her own overstuffed closet, full of free clothes given to her by designers in hopes that she or one of her clients will be photographed in them.
