Brad Goreski quits “The Rachel Zoe Project”

FREE AT LAST! For two seasons, Brad Goreski has been the bow-tie clad assistant to celeb stylist Rachel Zoe on Bravo’s The Rachel Zoe Project.

But no more. Brad tells PEOPLE that the two have gone their separate ways: “I love Rachel and she’s taught me everything I know. But there’s a point where either I do it now or I’ll never know what it’s like to spread my wings and soar.”

Says Zoe: “We couldn’t stop hugging and we couldn’t stop crying. He did this with such class and elegance. And I get it. I just told him, ‘I’m here for you always. … “We have a relationship that’s not normal. I jump into bed with him and wake him up and we have these pow wows and he’s like, ‘Wow, I haven’t brushed my teeth,’” Zoe says. “I don’t want to hire somebody for the purpose of the show, we just got lucky. No one’s ever going to be Brad to me.”

Goreski is counting on that. “I hope she’ll continue to teach me more and more,” he says. And while the dynamic duo’s frenzied pace has been constant fodder for Bravo’s The Rachel Zoe Project, filling Goreski’s designer shoes will be no easy feat.  For more of Zoe and Goreski’s exclusive interview, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Oct. 1.

I met Brad at the GLAAD Media Awards last spring right around the time he was creating a bit of a buzz in  for some photos of him looking sexy in jeans and just suspenders shot by photographer Terry Richardson.

I wondered if it was easier now to be an out gay man in LA, where he lives, than at any other time previously.

“We all have to realize what’s been down before us, all of the walls that have been broken down by the previous generation,” he said thoughtfully. “I have an amazing family too that never made it an issue that I was gay or played with Barbies. I’m very, very lucky. I think with each generation, the communities get more integrated, the LGBT community and the straight community. I think that’s really powerful.”