So I've run into a problem trying to get this to work. The appearance tab is called "CollectionsJournalTab5".
It appears that, that particular variable is not declared in the UI until after you either open the Collections Journal, so until you actually open the panel, I can not set the frame hidden via:
Lua Code:
CollectionsJournalTab5:SetScript("OnEvent", nil)
CollectionsJournalTab5:Hide()
There is no event fired when you open the overall collections frame, at least that I saw in the event trace, there is an event fired when you change to the appearance tab, but since you don't want to even see that tab, that event is useless. The same event fires when you open the xmog vendor, but again that is kind of useless.
If anyone has any ideas on how to overcome this it would be appreciated.