An Interview with Isaac Mizrahi
UNZIPPED

DIRECTOR Douglas Keeve and the flamboyant and dramatic "Whiz Kid, Wonder Boy and Seventh Avenue's Darling" fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi share much more than a love hate, personal and professional relationship. The Odd Couple of the fashion world who oscillate between frenetic pure admiration and scathing criticism of each other have captured the heart of not only the glossy fashion world but also the cinematic domain with the soon-to-be released intimate and revelationary documentary Unzipped.

Visually arresting and a contrast of extremities, Keeve is all angularity and deep intensity, there's the hint of stubble and a wiry, nervous energy. Where Keeve seems almost austere and reserved, Mizrahi's cheeks are flushed crimson. His Eraserhead chestnut hair, colourful bandanna and frown lines give him an impish and mischievous charm. In fact, he looks as if he's been cut from the cloth of one of those marbled Raphaelite cherubs who hints at pleasures forbidden and untold.

For the theatrical Mizrahi - who desperately tries to avoid depression before the showing of his vivid and ostentatious fashion collections, but always manages to sink into a mire of conflicting emotions - there is an air of surprise and quizzical knotting of the eyebrows at the whole caboodle named Unzipped.

One reporter manages to draw out of the portly drama king what it is that's causing such a reaction. Mizrahi pouts and throws his arms in the air. "What did Douglas see in me?" he retorts. "Maybe the biggest drama queen this side of the New World or something. I think Douglas is very different from me; he's very subdued and introspective. And I tend to be this warrior or something in the way I work - or Diana Vreeland at the very least; or some kind of Joseph Mankewiecz screenplay in the making," he concludes with a pirouette of the hands.

This is the raw and uncensored Mizrahi, the worthy focus of such attention and adulation in Unzipped (which scooped the winner of the 1995 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award). In one scene he is lying in bed in his apartment watching and creatively drawing from old Hollywood movies such as the scene where Loretta Young is dying of frostbite in The Call Of The Wild, or Anton Walbrook chastises Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes. He almost weeps, he rolls his eyes, he sighs and he explains to the camera that this is where he derives most of his inspiration for his fashion collections.

Close by there is the imposing presence of Reeve behind the camera drawing and wringing every nuance and emotion out of Mizrahi with the added comfort of knowing that there are even more intimate moments to be filmed. There are the tantrums that Mizrahi's throws in his office, the frustrations, the exhilarations, the terror and the pain of discovering that his Nanook Of The North conceptionary collection has been stolen by another designer.

One moment self-depreciating, the next hilariously witty, this colourful, compelling and eccentric character is a consummate actor who wears each and every fluctuating emotion on his cherubic face just as a warrior wears his medals of courage on his chest. Through the disquieting reflection of Unzipped he also reveals himself as a volatile creator who revels in a cacophonous world where personality, power and money rule.

Keeve's agrees and elaborates: "I was not interested in making a text book about fashion. I wanted to make Stephen King or Jurassic Park."

The tall, angular and cropped-blonde haired Keeve pauses, collects his thoughts and in retrospect offers: "When I was first introduced to the fashion world, I met people who were not like any people I'd ever met before. They were more passionate about their work, loonier, more brilliant, inspired and mad than any people I'd ever met. I decided to make this film because I'd never seen that world portrayed well in any medium.

"Over the years I'd come to know Isaac quite well," he adds with an inaudible inflection of pain in his eyes, "and he was the only designer that I wanted to make this film about because he's a renaissance man - he's the Dolly Parton of the fashion industry. So I approached Isaac with the idea of making this film and, being who he is, of course he loved it. I also knew that he would be willing to take the risk. When we were filming, I insisted that we be completely uncensored and I knew I could trust him to live up to that deal," he concludes.

Inspired by the documentaries of the 1930s and the 1940s the renowned fashion photographer whose work has seeped from the glossy pages of magazines such as Interview, Mademoiselle, GQ and Italian Vogue also realised that with Mizrahi's temperamental outbursts he would be embarking on a mission fraught with danger. But, after weighing up the pros and the cons realised that any pain, frustration, discomfort or wrath from Mizrahi would be well worth it.

Keeve - who graduated from UCLA and was on his way to a career in dentistry, before rapidly changing his plans after a summer job as a photographer for a modelling school - explains with a wistful look in his eyes, "The frustrating thing about documentary film-making is that we would shoot for hours and hours and nothing interesting would happen and we'd get fed up and leave. The next day, we'd find out that we missed the most incredible, fabulous, outrageous scene. That seemed to happen just about everyday.

"There's an inherent torture in making a film like this and trying to capture the most exciting things. I love documentaries but feel that most of them are more concerned with being informational rather than with capturing the spirit and excitement of their subject. My approach was less liberal; I couldn't care less about the truth. I wanted to capture the spirit and love in Isaac and in fashion," he concludes.

As Keeve is fully aware, Mizrahi has always been lauded as a rare phenomenon by everyone who knows him. By 1989 the son of Jewish parents had won numerous awards for his bold designs, been crowned "The King Of Tartans", "a major force in American sportswear," and "the hero of the next decade". Since then, Mizrahi has gone on to shatter conventional fashion wear and to embody the quintessential New Yorker.

With a voracious appetite for Hollywood old celluloid masterpieces, an obsession with the ballet world and promises to further his acting career in the feature film world (he starred in Michael J Fox's For Love Or Money) Isaac Mizrahi is the king of all that glitters.

Who can deny a self-made genius with the Midas touch what his heart desires? After all this is the man who confided to Vanity Fair on the subject of his future in the cinematic realms: "What if Woody Allen called me and said, 'I'm working on this movie and there's a really divine roll for you. We want exactly you! We don't want Robert Redford. We don't want Ralph Fiennes. We want you!'," he squeals excitedly. "It would be such a fantasy. Forget it!," he exclaims. "My idol, Woody Allen, right!"

And that phone call may just come one day soon, or even sooner ...

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