Isaac Mizrahi

Isaac Mizrahi (born October 14, 1961, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) American fashion designer who was known for provocative clothing designs as well as for his outsize personality on television and in film. He made a career of dressing the Hollywood elite as well as the general public.

Mizrahi was raised in a religious Syrian Jewish household. His father was a children’s clothing manufacturer, and his mother was well known for her fashion sense. Mizrahi learned to use a sewing machine and was making clothes—first for puppets and then for people—by the time he was in his teens. Mizrahi attended a yeshiva in Flatbush, New York, before transferring to New York City’s High School of Performing Arts (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts), where he developed his interests in acting and performance. (He appeared in Fame, the 1980 movie about that school.) He then attended Parsons School of Design to study fashion (graduated 1982) and while there began working part-time for designer Perry Ellis. After graduating he continued to work for Ellis and then held jobs with Jeffrey Banks and Calvin Klein before starting his own business in New York City in 1987.

His strikingly colourful and off-beat designs helped his career take off quickly. The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) recognized him with the Perry Ellis Award (now called the Swarovski Emerging Talent Award) in 1988 and the womenswear designer of the year award in 1989. He became known for designing with a sense of humour and for making overt references to pop culture, art, and sometimes even current events (e.g., an evening gown called “Desert Storm” that made reference to the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War). He used surprising fabrics in unexpected ways, such as tartan plaid for an evening gown (1989). With a changing aesthetic from season to season, he defied categorization.

By 1990 he was also collaborating with modern dance choreographers such as Twyla Tharp (Brief Fling, 1990) and Bill T. Jones (War Between the States, 1993) on costumes for dance productions. Mizrahi worked repeatedly with choreographer Mark Morris, beginning in the 1990s with Three Preludes (1992), Falling Down Stairs (1997), and Sandpaper Ballet (1999). He lent his design skills to costumes for theatre, opera, and film as well. He launched himself farther into the mainstream with his 1995 documentary Unzipped, which was a behind-the-scenes look at the development and production of his 1994 fall fashion line. The film won the 1995 Sundance audience award for documentaries. Two years later he published a series of comic books, Isaac Mizrahi Presents the Adventures of Sandee the Supermodel, which tells the adventures of a small-town young woman trying to make it in the big-city fashion industry.

In 1998, after witnessing a decline in sales, Mizrahi lost the support of his major financial backer, Chanel. He chose to close his business and turn his energy toward acting and entertainment. He began by producing a one-man Off-Broadway show called Les MIZrahi (2000), which was well received by critics and audiences. Though his business was no longer in operation, he did take on design jobs such as costumes for the play The Women (2001), for which he won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. He also launched The Isaac Mizrahi Show (2001–03), a talk show on the Oxygen network.

Mizrahi returned to fashion in 2003, this time in the mainstream, forming a partnership with discount retailer Target. To balance that, he also returned to high-end fashion with a new endeavour called “Isaac Mizrahi to Order” for custom-made luxury clothing. In the 2000s Mizrahi continued with those two design projects while taking on more performance roles (e.g., Project Runway All Stars, 2012–19). His design work branched out to housewares, footwear, and fragrance. In 2016 the first major exhibition devoted to his career—“Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History”—opened at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

Mizrahi wrote several books, including the memoir IM (2019).