Stylist Law Roach reveals the reason for his retirement. No, it's not Zendaya's fault

Law Roach got vulnerable this week about his decision to retire, and no, it has nothing to do with getting a second-row seat at the Louis Vuitton fashion show.

On Monday’s episode of Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast "High Low," the stylist behind Zendaya’s most iconic red carpet moments, Hunter Schafer’s feather bandeau and all of Lindsay Lohan’s recently elevated Lohan-aissance looks, opened up about his recent decision to retire.

Roach revealed that when he dropped the news that he was retiring — which he did in a now-deleted Instagram post — Zendaya reached out to him, offering to help.

“She called, and she said, ‘Girl, I thought we make big decisions together,'” Roach said. “Of course, she supported me. She’s like, ‘Do you need me to send you on a vacation? Like tell me what you’re going through,' and I talked to her about just being unhappy and being unhappy for a really long time and still grieving the death of my nephew. So, we had that talk, and she was like, ‘Whatever you need, whatever you need.'”

Roach’s 3-year-old nephew died in November 2021 when he fell out of a window on the 17th floor of a Chicago apartment building. The stylist said at the time, in a since-deleted Instagram post, that it was the toughest thing he’s ever had to deal with.

“I think that’s when the shift for me started to happen,” Roach said on the podcast. “Because I had literally only got to see my nephew four times in his three years because of work.”

The guilt of not seeing his nephew enough due to his busy work schedule ate the stylist up inside, he said, and he couldn’t help but think of how he hadn’t been able to hold him enough and didn’t get a chance to kiss him or tell him he loves him enough.

“I had never been depressed in my life, and I went through a bout of really, really strong depression,” Roach said.

The stylist then explained that Zendaya had nothing to do with his sudden retirement, "but the internet is cruel,” and said that after he announced his retirement, short video clips went viral and were scrutinized online.

“People started to blame her for my retirement, and that wasn’t fair to her,” he said. “The things they were saying, of course isn’t true. So, then it spilled over to my suffering. She started to suffer too. And I didn’t think that was fair because she has always protected me in this industry and vice-versa.”

Roach cleared up an interaction between him and Zendaya captured in the days following his retirement announcement, in which social media users speculated he was upset with her at a Louis Vuitton fashion show during Paris Fashion Week. The “Euphoria” star recently became an ambassador for Louis Vuitton.

In the clip, Zendaya takes the last empty seat in the front row next to Emma Stone and then points Roach to an empty seat behind her in the second row.

He clarified that the two were running late because they got stuck behind an accident in traffic, and when they arrived at the fashion show, it was chaotic.

“They’ll just sit you wherever they can find you a seat, but I had a seat, and the seat that she pointed to, that was Darnell’s — which is her assistant — that was his seat,” he said. “We were both actually standing there, and so she was like, ‘Darnell, that’s your seat.’ And then they came and was like, ‘Law, you need to sit.’ I was like, ‘Well, you need to tell me where I’m sitting.'”

Roach said that while working in this industry he always tried to remember that his clients were not his friends, but when it came to Zendaya, it was different. “She’s my sister," he said. "We grew up together.”

Roach began styling the Emmy-winning actor before he even officially called himself a professional stylist, two years before his move to Los Angeles in 2014.

At the beginning of Zendaya’s career, her stylist and her dad were her whole team, according to Roach, who also served as her publicist. Her father worked as her manager.

“In the beginning of our relationship, we made a vow to each other that we would do everything we possibly could to elevate each other,” Roach said. “It’s so funny ’cause we call ourselves ‘Big ideas, small detail.’ So, I’m the big idea. Like I live in this fantasy world, and I bring her these things, and she pulls it together, and then my job is to create this narrative and tell her what it is and who this girl is as she goes on the carpet. And she just becomes that.”

Roach said he’s ready to switch gears. And while dating hasn’t been a feasible option for him before, he is opening his "heart to the possibility.”

More than that, he is switching his priorities to family and spending time with his three nieces any chance he gets.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.