Saturday, February 27, 2016

Isaac Mizrahi

In Style March 2016
When a very dear friend of mine would visit my city, he loved to treat me to dinners. His pocketbook was definitely bigger than mine, so the restaurants were grander than I would typically go to. On one evening, after a delicious French meal, a particular favorite of ours, and several bottles of Chateau de Beaucastle, we walked into the night, and he went to get the car ... I'm guessing.

It was a lovely evening and the wine gaze made the city even more spectacular. I turned to face the skyline and saw a familiar face walking my way. The face belonged to Isaac Mizrahi. I had recently viewed "Unzipped," the documentary of his life in a fashion season and knew him to be a friend.

"Unzipped" is remarkable. If you like fashion, and especially in its heyday of the supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and a bitchy Linda Evangelista, you have to see this movie. I was still working retail at that time of my meet-cute, and though I didn't work in apparel perse, I was in the environment of it. One of my work colleagues and friends had just recently moved to Dallas to work as the couture buyer for Niemann Marcus, and I knew that he was also in town with Mizrahi for a Niemann's event. The film has nothing to do with retail directly, but it examines the life of the designer in his process. And it is the process that I find so fascinating. Mizrahi is a natural performer, who articulates his season from inspiration to runway brilliantly. As bold and neurotic, fashion's Woody Allen, as he seems to be, he is almost fragile. Will this work? How did this guy get what I was doing before I showed? And one of my favorite moments, aside from his season's inspirational nod to "Nanook of the North," is when he flies to Paris and waxes poetic about all that Paris has to offer when, in the end, he says to himself ... you know, I just want to fly in, get a good cup of coffee, and get out. Mizrahi is a homeboy. And his world is NYC ... not really anywhere else.

So when he walked up toward me, I exclaimed, 'Isaac!' He said, 'HELLO!' and embraced me. I whispered, actually shouted, "I loved "Unzipped!" And he yelled in my ear, "I LOVE YOU!" It was magical, and it seems from then on, we were best friends forever.

When I had the chance to tell my buyer friend of the exchange, he said, 'Oh! that queen.'  Yes, he is.




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