Rachel Zoe Gets Unfiltered About Motherhood and Divorce (Exclusive)

When she appears onscreen over Zoom from her home office on Tuesday, Nov. 18, Rachel Zoe is dolled up in her classic style, with bold statement earrings peeking through her signature long, blonde waves. During pauses in speaking, she takes sips from a Venti Starbucks cup — a longtime staple of the star.

“I will literally put on a full cat eye to go to sleep,” Zoe states bluntly in the premiere episode of the upcoming season 15 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a preview of which was shown at BravoCon on Nov. 14. “I am unapologetically myself.”

Zoe, 54, might have the same style fans have come to know and love since she first made waves as a celebrity stylist starring on the Bravo hit The Rachel Zoe Project nearly two decades ago, but on the inside, she’s changed a lot.

“I feel different on every level,” she says. “I’m very honest about where I am and what I’m dealing with on [RHOBH]. I think my goal is really to share the reality of my life. And everyone’s going through stuff, right?”

Zoe is newly single – and in the new season of RHOBH, premiering Dec. 4, fans will get to see her rejoin the Bravo network as she navigates life post-split from her husband of 26 years Rodger Berman. She filed for divorce in July, 10 months after they first announced their separation.

“I’m really trying to help as many women as possible,” says Zoe. “I mean, probably at least 30% of the women in my life are going through a separation or a divorce. The question I kept getting asked and still get asked is: ‘Why am I so okay coming out of a relationship that really transcended my entire adult life?’ It’s because I’m independent — financially, professionally and socially. I think that there isn’t enough emphasis put on the importance of that.”

“Ironically, something came across my feed this morning with Reese Witherspoon doing an interview talking about just that: how critical it is for women to be independent,” she continues. “You have to have your own things to wake up for every day. I think because of that, when I made the decision to leave my marriage, it was like, okay, next. No matter what life throws at you, you have to be able to stand up on your own. You just have to.”

Zoe first met Berman in 1991, while they were both students at George Washington University. After graduation, the two moved to New York City to build their respective careers, Berman’s in finance and Zoe’s in fashion.

After a stint at a magazine and dressing pop stars like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, Zoe moved to Los Angeles in 2002. She famously dressed Jennifer Garner in a vintage, orange one-shoulder Valentino dress or the 2004 Oscars and began styling more celebrity clients including Lindsay Lohan, Kate Hudson and Mischa Barton.

When Zoe started working with Nicole Richie in 2005, the two made boho chic mainstream. And soon, like Richie, Zoe became a target of tabloid gossip herself.

“I did let it get to me, and it was hard,” she says. “I will say it was clients at the time like Salma Hayek and Jennifer Garner and Eva Mendes and Cameron Diaz who were so instrumental in helping me through. They would say, ‘You know who you are, and we know who you are, so who is it that you’re worried about?’ It was this fear of people believing what they read. But in the public eye you get to this point where you have to give zero f—- about what people think of you.”

The public’s interest in Zoe’s life lead to The Rachel Zoe Project premiering in 2008. On the show, Zoe lifted the curtain on the world of celebrity styling like never before, while also shedding insight into her personal life, including her fears about motherhood.

“Over the last decade, the thing I hear most about is how my show impacted working moms who were scared to have children and how it helped them navigate that process,” she says. “That continues to make me so happy.”

Zoe and Berman were together for 18 years before they had their first son, Skyler, in 2011.

“We were together for seven years before we actually got married, so we were always on a different timeline,” Zoe says. “Sky was not intentional, necessarily. It just sort of happened, and I thank God. I think I was definitely a classic case of the person that was never going to be ready, but wanted to be a mom. I knew I had to be a mom. I just wasn’t sure when and how, and the moment that little angel boy Sky ended up in my hands, I didn’t put him down until he started school.”

Zoe and Berman had their second son, Kaius, in 2013. At first, “I was like, ‘Okay, I am just going to have one girl. I’m going to take her everywhere,'” Zoe says. “Then I had two boys. That’s why I always say I’ll never say never to anything ever again. Because we make plans and the universe laughs.”

The boys were a major reason why Zoe decided to step away from reality TV with the end of The Rachel Zoe Project in 2013.

“I was being chased down alleyways by paparazzi with baby strollers, or holding my kids in my arms and physically running from paps,” she says. “I remember a turning point when Sky took one of the paparazzi’s cameras out of their hands and turned it on him. He was like 3 or 4, and I was like, ‘No, this isn’t what I want for them.’”

After Kaius’ birth, Zoe also decided to shift her focus from styling to business and building her brand.

“It was hard to give styling my undivided attention and to get up and jump on a plane every other day, which is really what that life is,” she says. “It’s incessant and unpredictable traveling, with fittings at 2 a.m. You are working for other people, and you are on other people’s schedules, and that’s very hard to do when you have multiple businesses, and you are the CEO and you have a newborn and a toddler.”

“I’ve definitely spent my life trying to be all things to all people,” she continues. “But in the end, it’s not sustainable in the sense that you can’t really be 100% everything to everyone in every area of your life and your business. You just can’t.”

Zoe attempted to delegate some of her responsibilities in styling but found herself burned one too many times.

“In full disclosure, I just couldn’t trust assistants,” she says. “I think the definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome. I think after being completely betrayed, for lack of a better term, in various ways, by enough assistants and not being able to trust them with my clients and stuff to represent what I do and how I am with my clients, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. If I have five clients going through an award season, I physically cannot be with all five at the same time. You have to be able to entrust that in people that represent your work, and if you can’t do that, the system is broken.”

Since The Rachel Zoe Project’s end, Zoe has grown her business to almost 50 brand extensions and licensing partners. She also launched a podcast, Climbing in Heels, and has her subscription box service Curateur.

Before singing on for RHOBH, she called a family meeting with her boys.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to do the show without my kids,” she says. “I mean, they’re the ones that told me to do it. I told them what it would mean and that Mommy would have to be gone a lot more and that they would possibly be on it. I told them I’d be talking pretty openly and honestly about things. They were like, ‘Mom, it’s your truth. You should speak freely and honestly. Don’t hide things from us.'”

Zoe says she’s candid about her split from Berman on RHOBH, and explains that they became different people over time.

“I was done. I was really done,” she says. “I don’t suffer from guilt of not having given it everything I could have. I don’t suffer from that, and I don’t suffer from feeling like it was a failed marriage. Having been married for 26 years, I would say that three-quarters of that was amazing.”

Zoe says she realized the relationship had become fractured when she started “to question decisions” and realized that she and Berman didn’t agree “on what certain outcomes should be.”

“I started to feel like this may not be the most advantageous situation for our children,” she says. “For me for the last 14 years, literally every breath I take is for my kids. So every decision I make, every lens that I look through is through a lens of my children, of what are they going to think? What are they going to say? How will this affect them? I have never felt that people should live together and stay together unhappy.”

Zoe admits that “in hindsight” she “100%” should have “left sooner.”

“I think if you ask any woman who has left a situation, they would probably say that they probably should have done it sooner,” she says. “But it is what it is. At the end of the day, I ultimately did what’s best for the kids. I think that having two parents that love them is more important than having two parents together that maybe shouldn’t be together anymore.”

Anyone who follows Zoe on Instagram can see in her videos how wise her boys are beyond their years, and she says Sky “for sure” knew what was going on with his parents.

“A lot of times I’ll try and hold whatever I’m going through back from my children, just because they have their own stuff, but Kaius is so intuitive,” she says. “He’ll be like, ‘Mom, do you need to talk? I can help.’ I’m like, ‘Who are you?’ Like an alien child. Sky, too. They’re both really intuitive. We’re going through all this together.”

If there’s one thing Zoe is measured about, it’s questions about the timeline of Berman’s relationship with girlfriend Bree Jacoby, whom he was first photographed with four months after he and Zoe split, and whether there was any crossover in the relationships.

“I don’t know that I can answer that really,” Zoe says. “Listen, the timeline’s the timeline. And again, everything I answer is through a lens of what my children will see and hear. It is what it is. Whether or not they’re together now, I don’t really know. Life is wild, and I can say it takes a whole lot to really shock me.”

Right now, Zoe says her relationship with Berman “depends on the day.”

“I think I need time, and I need space,” she says. “At this point in my life, I’m doing anything to protect my peace and happiness. I can say that it’s been certainly the most freeing, transformative time in my life. Of course, there’s brutal days. Don’t get me wrong. There’s hard days. But those days are usually because I’m very overwhelmed. I mom so hard, and I work so hard, and there’s always been a lack of self-care and me time.”

Zoe says she’s working as hard right now as she did “10, 12 years ago.”

“It’s a lot sometimes,” she says. “Just all of it. It’s almost like I have decision fatigue sometimes, or decision paralysis, as my manager calls it. Other than that, it’s incredibly peaceful. It’s incredibly freeing, and there’s something really liberating about just being in your own mind and body all the time, making decisions on your own and with the kids.”

In this next chapter, Zoe says she’s “absolutely dating” and considering what she wants for her next relationship.

“It’s incredibly fun,” she says. “To be honest, that wasn’t hard for me to get into. It really wasn’t. I think this era for me is just freedom. Anyone who comes into my life or our lives is only going to be someone that adds value in terms of making me laugh, making me smile and really just making sense. It’ll have to feel organic and natural to who I am now.”

As for her business, she says she’s “never been more excited” about what’s in the works.

“It’s so much fun,” she says. “I just love every day when people come over to me and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, my whole house is filled with Rachel Zoe product.’ My goal as a brand has always been to touch as many people as possible and make fashion accessible and affordable and relatable to as many women as possible. I’ll do another podcast, and the show has been such an experience. For me, I’m just surrounding myself with incredible people that are like-minded and even some that aren’t like-minded, so that we really can challenge each other. It’s fun.”

With both her personal and professional lives firing on all cylinders, Zoe is asked whether she ever envisions a time where she slows down.

“Slow down? Oh my God, no,” she says. “I’m speeding up. I mean, when I retire to the south of France and make jewelry on the beach in my 70s, sure. But for now, no. I’m having too much fun.”

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 15 will premiere Dec. 4 on Bravo, with episodes available to stream the next day on Peacock.