Rachel Zoe opened the desert weekend Thursday night with an exclusive “Welcome to the Desert Zoeasis Dinner” at The Grand Patio in Indian Wells, a pre-festival gathering timed to lead into the first weekend of Coachella 2023. The event, co-hosted with The Zoe Report and presented in partnership with essie, brought fashion names, reality TV faces and musicians together before the crowds arrived in the Coachella Valley.
Zoe began the evening with a welcome toast, setting the tone for a cocktail hour built around custom drinks inspired by essie shades including Marshmallow and Ballet Slippers. Guests then moved to a seated patio dinner, with the night unfolding under the desert sky and a mix of live entertainment that included a DJ set and an acoustic performance by Mojave Grey.
The guest list gave the dinner its pull. Madelyn Cline, Winnie Harlow, Sara Sampaio, Sophia Culpo, Montana Tucker, Brad Mondo, Giannina Gibelli, Blake Horstmann and Zander Bleck were among those in attendance, while Kyle Richards was absent from the gathering. The setting turned even more deliberate as guests gathered around outdoor firepits, roasted essie-branded marshmallows and listened to the acoustic set by the flames.
The dinner was positioned as a warm-up for a weekend expected to draw thousands of visitors to the Coachella Valley, and it also fit Zoe’s growing visibility as one of the newest cast members of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” That helped give the night a sharper edge than a standard festival party: it was both a social marker and a signal that the desert season had started.
Zoe said the Zoeasis concept was meant to be an intimate welcome to the desert, where fashion, music and community come together in a magical setting, and she added that there is nothing like celebrating under the desert stars with friends to kick off such an iconic weekend. The event closed with gift bags filled with essie products and sunless tanning items from Brown Bee, a final detail that made the evening feel less like a reception and more like a carefully staged opening note for Coachella 2023.
