Isaac Mizrahi: Turning His Dreams Into Fashion

Isaac Mizrahi has been designing fashion since he was fifteen years old.  His versatile and ever-changing designs have dressed everyone from celebrities to Target shoppers, and even the casts of several ballets and Broadway Shows.  He’s hosted television shows (“Isaac”, “The Fashion Show”), been a judge on “Project Runway All-Stars” and been the subject of a documentary film (“Unzipped”), not to mention a long list of television appearances. He stopped by the SiriusXM studios this week to talk about the season finale of “Project Runway All-Stars” with Ron Bennington.  Excerpts of that interview appear below.

Ron Bennington: That documentary that you did, you were in New York at the time, and the whole thing just seemed over the top artistic to me, and I had no idea the pressure that’s on in your business.

Isaac Mizrahi: Isn’t it crazy? It’s crazy! And it keeps happening all year. It never relents. I have friends who are artists. Great artists like painters and installation artists and video artists and they freak out when they have a show in like ten years. They go, oh know what am I going to do about my show in three years? And I go, oh really? What are you going to do about your show in three years? I’m going to slap you. Because we have a show every six months.

Ron Bennington: And when one show is done, you’re already thinking about the next one.

Isaac Mizrahi: Someone was talking about Woody Allen this morning– who is incredibly prolific, and I love him. Someone said he has a drawer in which he keeps ideas. I was at the gym and they said, oh he has a drawer and he just puts these ideas in a drawer and then when he needs an idea he says oh not that one, not that one….THAT one. And it’s kind of the way you work on a collection. You have millions of ideas. I have books and files and swag files and things, and something resonates at a moment and you go, oh it’s time for that…or no, it’s so not time for that. And that’s how it begins.

Ron Bennington: When people say some color is in or some color is out, who the hell is making these decisions?

Isaac Mizrahi: You know what? Nobody really. They say that now in order to sell more of one color and not the other because they own more of that color. But there actually used to be that. When I was a tiny kid– and I remember into the 80s there was an orange moment. I think that was the last time when there was a color that was brighter than any other color. Honestly, the idea of inspiration– it does kind of flow through the universe like a common thing. It’s like a zeitgeist. People are thinking roughly the same thought, and then a lot of collections look the same because everybody saw the Renoir show at the Frick or everyone saw the Balenciaga show in Paris or that old thing at the Louvre that week.

Ron Bennington: But sometime does it come from outside of fashion? Like from a hit movie?

Isaac Mizrahi: Oh sure. I mean, you know it’s a dialogue. And who knows where things start and end right now. It used to be that there were couturiers and they really influenced the way people made clothes because in the old days, technique was very very important. It’s not so important anymore. Because it’s like– photography. Who really knows what a beautifully printed photograph looks like anymore. We just look at the image and we respond to it in a visceral way and the way it’s presented and the context. It used to be that when you printed a beautiful photograph that was part of it. If you were like Diane Arbus or Irving Penn or Avedon even. Do you know what I mean? But now it’s more about a consciousness that comes up. And yes, Lady Gaga speaks to somebody and then it goes to the street and then the street influences a certain collection in Paris and then that collection influences Mad Men or something and then everybody does something that looks like Jackie Kennedy. It’s a very big wonderful amorphous world of ideas now.

Ron Bennington: But you’ve got to let that come to you subconsciously.

Isaac Mizrahi: Yeah. Well, actually this morning, I got an email from my person Erica, and she said, oh what inspired this ballet? I just designed a ballet for San Francisco. And I gave her this little answer and she said, no, we need more than that. So I said okay here’s what happened. Mark Morris who is the choreographer for the ballet said, it’s Martineu, which is this beautiful music–  this harpsichord thing. And any time I think of that particular music I think of orange wedges. I don’t know why, it sounds like oranges and grapefruits to me. I have synesthesia in some way. If I hear music, I start seeing crazy colors. So I had this dream about citrus wedges and muscles, right? The muscles on dancers bodies and corresponding shapes of wedges and muscles. And I emailed him the next morning and said, oh my god I had this crazy dream about citrus… And then the next thing I knew he said, well it’s nine men and it’s very gay. And I was like, that’s very surprising because his work is always about women. So then I thought about, for some reason, the idea of camouflage because it’s this kind of co-opted thing– gay men, it sort of represents this thing about masculinity. So I decided I was going to re-color it and make it this kind of gay camouflage. And the whole thing would be gay camouflage– the backdrop is this big camouflage print and the men are all in this camouflage. And then I realized that, it looked like citrus wedges and muscles– the shape of the camouflage. And it was this crazy thing and it came from a dream. And it sounds so remote and so affected and so witless. But that is the process. That is my process.

Ron Bennington: And I think that’s what’s interesting about you doing Project Runway because so many time the new kid almost gets a break because oh, it’s new and fresh. And how can you be fresh when you have got this much experience and this much history.

Isaac Mizrahi: Well that’s why I took the job because it does help me keep myself fresh. And I learn as much as I teach.

Ron Bennington: What amazes me, is that these kids can do this at all. That within twenty-four hours they can make clothes. I think if I had an opportunity to sit down, I could probably come up with an atomic bomb before I could come up with pants.

Isaac Mizrahi: (laughs) Oh you’re dangerous. You’re the one we want to put through the screening paces at the airport. But I know what you mean. I’m not really good in a short amount of time either. I think it would take me the longest time to really conceive something. Like that Hitchcock thing– once you have the boards, you’re finished. Do I really have to shoot the movie now? In some ways, I’m that way. Once I do my sketches, I go, really? Do I have to sit through all the fittings? But then when I do it I learn so much and it becomes this fascinating thing. Fittings and castings and the show and the music– it really does become this fabulous, fabulous obsessive thing.

Ron Bennington: So really the kind of research work is where the kind of, thrill is for you.

Isaac Mizrahi: Yeah. Well you call it research, and a large part of it is research but that’s a very dry word to use. Because I don’t research something– well maybe when I do a period opera, I do research very closely what the clothes were that year that it’s being set. But when I do a collection it really does come from a place like a dream again. Some of my best collections have come from the craziest places, like a dream or a gesture. Someone made a gesture with their arm and everything was based on this motion of their arm. Really so crazy.

Ron Bennington: And yet, unlike any other types of art, it has to be functional. Can you make it for a price, can you ship it around the world?

Isaac Mizrahi: Yes, that’s right. It’s an applied art. It’s not an art form. I remember also as a kid at Womens Wear Daily, John Fairchild, who ran the show in those days, he used to make that a real sticking point. He used to say, no it’s not an art form, it’s an applied art. And he was sort of right about that. Any time someone got arty about fashion, he’d be like, “Oh really? Sorry for you.” And I get that because in the end, it’s like, either she wants to buy the dress or she doesn’t want to buy the dress.

Ron Bennington: And yet everyone sees this as such a glamorous business. This is now, the thing that kids think about. When you were younger, I don’t think kids probably talked about it that much.

Isaac Mizrahi: I think you’re right. Largely that’s to do with reality competition television shows. People are vying for that kind of stardom now. And I think the really good ones won’t be affected by it. But to be in it for stardom is wrong.

Ron Bennington: One of the things that I think that’s interesting about your career, is, here’s this high pressure job, and you have moved it along. I mean you are a named person. And yet you’ll go into all these other fields. Doing a talk show and acting and singing, and it reminds me of like, when Andy Warhol would do stuff other than paint.

Isaac Mizrahi: Andy Warhol was my idol. He was my favorite favorite person to think about. Him and John Cocteau, and Cecil Beaton. These people who did more than one thing. And not so much as a dilettante, but as an interested person. Also not so much as someone who is just seeking someone’s approval. I mean everybody is seeking someone’s approval, but, in the end you do it because it’s interesting and not boring. And I think what makes me good in fashion is, I get really bored really fast. So I want to move on.

Ron Bennington: And that will anger the critics right?

Isaac Mizrahi: Yes, and that’s okay. I can’t explain it to you, but it’s okay. For every review I get that says oh what a dilettante, I get another review who says, oh this is masterful and congratulations it’s beautiful.

Ron Bennington: When you look at these kids now, is there one thing that you would tell them on this show? Obviously they are not all going to win. And there’s just some really ridiculously talented things that they do.

Isaac Mizrahi: Especially on our show, all of them have come through a crazy process and won to some extent. It’s all stars. If I could tell them one thing– I wish I could unburden some of that darkness that we were talking about. I wish I could help them through that, but there’s absolutely no way you can. All you can say is enjoy the process, enjoy the process. And it will be true to some extent but they are also gonna feel it. So there’s nothing you can do to shield them from that. That’s the real world.

Ron Bennington: And all of them have to develop these personalities. And the ones that make it further along, it is part personality as much as it is clothes.

Isaac Mizrahi: Yes, and no. Weirdly, luckily, the really talented ones on our show are the really funny ones that you can’t stop watching. I think it just goes hand in hand. I’m watching my other favorite show which is RuPaul’s Drag Race. I can’t get enough of that show, it’s just so irreverent and so hilarious. And it’s weird because the really good drag queens are also the really crazy ones who you want to watch more and more. And they don’t get eliminated because they’re crazy and their process is crazy and the result is usually crazy and surprising and genius. And so it’s the same thing with the fashion designers. Their process is so interesting and it just gets them to this place where week after week they just produce this wonderful thing.

Ron Bennington: But that’s interesting because somehow weird is a good thing in business and yet it’s the thing that we try to squash down in school and even as parents, we’re like, well try to fit in dude. And it’s like the worst possible thing.

Isaac Mizrahi: I didn’t have that growing up. My parents didn’t do that so much. I mean it was implied but they never said to me, “hey would you stop doing female impersonations at the beach club, it’s embarrassing.” But they would kind of roll their eyes and look the other way. But they didn’t stop me.

Ron Bennington: Isaac, thank you so much for stopping by.

Isaac Mizrahi: Thank you. This was great, I loved this.

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You can hear this and other Ron Bennington Interviews in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.  Learn more about Ron Bennington Interviews here.

Project Runway All-Stars airs on Thursday nights at 9pm on Lifetime.  Visit their homepage here, and you can follow Isaac on twitter @isaacmizrahi or visit his website IsaacMizrahi.com.