
There was a time where all you saw on red carpets were collarbones and shoulder blades.
Working at a weekly tabloid magazine in the mid-2000s, during awards season it was my job to download the images of starlets as they hit The Oscars or The Golden Globes, and pull together 'best dressed' lists.
Kate Hudson. Gwyneth Paltrow. Kate Bosworth. Cameron Diaz. Charlize Theron.
Back then, the criteria for making the cut was to be suitably A-list, beautiful, slim, and wearing a gown.
Achingly thin was in. Rachel Zoe was the most prominent stylist working in Hollywood, and many of her acolytes adopted her signature look: waif-like, shrouded in vintage designer clothes with Balenciaga handbags that outsized the entire circumference of their mid-section, and Starbucks Venti lattes the size of their heads.
The 'Zoe-bots', as they were known in the media, included celebrity pals like Mischa Barton and Lindsay Lohan.
Rachel Zoe and Lindsay Lohan in 2009. Image: Getty.
It was a time when to be fashionable meant to be tiny.
When Nicole Richie signed on to the stylist's client list, she famously shrank down to Zoe-like proportions.
It seemed that in order to rebrand her image, Richie had to change her shape. Seemingly overnight, she went from the good-time loving, Ugg boot-wearing star of The Simple Life to a style icon, sitting front row at Fashion Week.
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