BEVERLY HILLS, California ― Think you’re too opinionated? That may not be a bad thing. In fact, for fashion guru Joe Zee it led to success in the high-powered, fiercely competitive field of fashion design.

Zee is the creative director for Elle Magazine and the host of Sundance Channel’s “All on the Line,” which begins its second season Friday.

“As a kid I was studious and always opinionated,” he says in the busy lounge of a hotel here. “I was probably naughty. I remember when I was 6 I had to have the newest bag from the Disney store and I threw a tantrum until my grandmother bought it. I got home and carried that bag everywhere. I put on sunglasses. I remember walking around my house with sunglasses on, carrying a new Disney bag, and telling my mother, my grandmother, my sister that whatever they were wearing was not grand enough, and telling them they had to change and should wear this or that,” he laughs.

On “All on the Line” Zee helps designers who’ve lost their way and tries to resuscitate their business. Part fashionista, part therapist and part drill-sergeant, he harangues and cajoles them into fulfilling their stagnating potential. But their customers will not be dressing up until Zee’s completed his dressing down.

“The same way people in America don’t know what a stylist is, they also don’t know how cutthroat the industry is and how hard designers have to work to get their clothes into a store,” says Zee, who’s dressed in a starched white linen shirt and a gray suit, the jacket in his lap.

“Ten out of 10 times it doesn’t happen for people. You look at incredibly talented designers like Marc Jacobs, Isaac Mizrahi, they had to go out of business not once but twice to find their success. I remind this to all the young designers I work with all the time: it is a very, very difficult industry. You do it because you love it. You do it for an instant payout? You’d be better off buying a lottery ticket or robbing a bank because right now you do this out of passion, you do this out of love. And that’s really why we’re all there.”

Zee, who describes himself as a tastemaker, stylist and fashion editor, knows how difficult it is. He left his native Toronto at 20 to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. He majored in advertising communication and journalism in fashion, but most of what he’s learned has been on the job, he says.

“I packed everything in the back of my dad’s station wagon, made him drive me to the city. We got lost in the Bronx at 5 a.m. and it was scary, but it was exhilarating. Like, ‘Lock the doors, close the windows!’ But I was so excited to be here.”

Because he had no work visa, he could only intern for free. His first job was interning with Mirabella magazine. He stayed for two years while he attended school.

“Those were very lean years that made me appreciate everything else,” says Zee, who is of Chinese extraction.

“They were tough. There were nights that were really hard. I remember sitting with a friend and we would eat Slim Fast for lunch because it was 85 cents a can and it was filling. I wasn’t trying to lose weight, but a slice of pizza was $1.25 so at 85 cents it was cheaper and we would save our money and eat a slice of pizza on Fridays sometimes. For dinner sometimes we would split a box of Rice-A-Roni. I wouldn’t appreciate what I have today if I didn’t live that way, and I’m glad I lived that way,” he says.

“It makes me so proud of any accomplishment I make in my life and it makes failures worth it and successes worth it and makes me try harder every day and live better. I’m so happy I wasn’t given everything quite so easily.”

For the past 20 years Zee, who will be 43 on Wednesday, has worked his way into fashion’s pantheon. His first paying job was with creative director Polly Mellen at Allure Magazine.

“She taught me so much about having an eye for fashion, the emotion of fashion. The first time I was there she took a Galliano jacket off the rack and said, ‘Look at this jacket.’ I said it was beautiful. She turned it inside out and said, ‘This is why it’s beautiful,’ the way it was made on the inside.”

Counseling designers on the show is a fulfilling venture, he says, though sometimes he loses patience.

“I genuinely do care about these people even when they’re a pain in the (rear). I care about them in a different way, but I still really do ... Creative people drive me crazy, but I understand and appreciate their creative angst. If I’m brutal with them it’s only because I know they can do better. They don’t need me to be their mom and say everything’s OK. Most of them have a mom who says, ‘Everything’s OK’ and that’s why their business is failing.

“I come in there when they are at their last opportunity to survive. When they’ve invested that much time and money into their business they need it to work. And I’m here to help them work.”

By Luaine Lee

(McClatchy-Tribune News Service )

(Distributed by MCT Information Services)