Socialite Life caught up with Brad Goreski ahead of his new Bravo series, It’s A Brad Brad World (premiering January 2nd @ 10 pm EST). We discovered that Goreski digs us (awesome sauce, as we dig him) and that much will be revealed in his new reality show, including the elephant in the room.
On transitioning from assistant to lead stylist:
It was very hard. It was a whole different amount of stress. It wasn’t so much the fear of disappointing somebody else, but more like disappointing myself. I got the courage and the confidence to be a really good assistant, but it’s taken me a little bit to develop the confidence as my own stylist.
It was a major transition for me and definitely a theme that we explore on the show; How I go from being the number one assistant, to whom the responsibility doesn’t really fall on the shoulders of. It falls on the boss. It falls on the stylist. And so transitioning into that role was definitely new for me. Just being a boss, in general, was something I really had to learn, and we definitely explore that throughout the season.
On how working with former co-worker Taylor Jacobson prepared him for the tough stuff:
She was very, very tough and I have to say in the moment I really didn’t understand what she was doing. At times she was very sweet, but then at other times she was evil and at other times we were laughing. And I never knew who I was going to get.
In the end, I actually believe that Taylor really helped shape the way that I work and the way that I speak to and treat my assistants. The semi-abuse had a very strong impact on the way that I work today. So yeah, in the moment it was not so good, but in hindsight, it was all good.
On the much-publicized rift with former boss Rachel Zoe:
I think you’ll see from the show the reality of what my world was when I left Rachel, and indeed a lot of time was spent at home while I was waiting for work to come in with my dogs and my boyfriend.
But, the whole point of me going off on my own and also I think the point of assisting people is you choose a profession which you want to learn from somebody who is the expert. And then once you get to a place where you feel like you’re ready to go off on your own into that profession is what I did. And my intention was to always be stylish and my intention when I left was to create my own business and they were aware of that.
Working for Rachel is a very special experience. To work with somebody of her caliber and her talent and to be able to learn from her and watch her work is a really incredible thing. I really wanted to leave with a clean slate just because of what had happened with Taylor when she was dismissed.
And I really didn’t want things to turn out that way. I didn’t want it to be that Rachel and I could never speak again. And I felt – and that’s why I say in the first episode that I felt like I was very honest and I felt like I carried myself with a lot of dignity and grace because I had seen what happened with Taylor and I didn’t want it to be that way. And unfortunately, it turned out to be that way a little bit for reasons that are unknown to me.
And so I don’t really want to make assumptions about Rachel and how she feels. But I just think it’s unfortunate that as people who devote a lot of time to working for her and working very hard for her that it has to – it seems that it kind of ends in similar ways. Yeah. And it’s too bad because I did really enjoy – I did really enjoy Rachel and I do respect her very much.
Socialite Life debuted back in 2003. SL Flashback showcases some of our favorite content from years past. This article was originally published on December 23, 2011.