The Many Influences on Mizrahi
From the time he showed his first collection in 1988, Isaac Mizrahi’s ancestral tree has been easy to trace.
In the beginning was Halston, known for cutting rich fabrics into easy shapes. Mizrahi’s satin pajama pants for day and slip dress with the how-low-can-you-go sling back were early signs of Halston’s influence.
Perry Ellis showed Mizrahi how to put a jaunty twist on an all-American style, and perk up old tartan plaid. Mizrahi’s tartan kilt minidress is a sort of thank-you note for those lessons.
Geoffrey Beene supplied the idea for the jumpsuits that helped win Mizrahi his first Council of Fashion Designers of America award as best new talent in 1988. While the elder designer preferred them in black, the younger used more color.
And Norman Norell cast his long shadow across Mizrahi’s evening sweaters with white collars and cuffs, for spring ’91. The updated versions were detachable and machine washable.
Despite the obvious inspirations, Mizrahi has put his own thumbprint on his work.
“With most young designers you see a kernel of an idea that may develop,” notes Neiman Marcus fashion director Joan Kaner. “With Mizrahi there has been no incubation period. He arrived on the scene full-blown.”
In his spring ’92 line, his signature is stronger than ever.
A strapless ivory dress silk-screened with a Georgia O’Keeffe-scale yellow rose, and with a matching flower-print scarf at the neckline, captures Mizrahi’s Taos-in-Hollywood tendencies. So does his tooled-leather bustier worn with white ruffled britches and billowing black skirt.
His lace evening gowns embroidered with horse heads, not the usual florals, are as close as it gets to American couture.
“(The spring line) was Mizrahi’s mature collection,” says Katell le Bourhis, the curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art who is most instrumental in collecting his designs for the museum’s permanent collection.
Not everyone is so impressed. Madeleine Gallay carried his label last fall in her Los Angeles boutique. “It was a catastrophe,” she says. “Here were some of the hottest, leanest, meanest evening clothes I’d seen in a long time. And they didn’t fit. They were all 6 inches too big.”
At the Europe-oriented Ultimo boutique in Chicago, where Mizrahi sells well, owner Joan Weinstein recalls, “In the beginning there was a problem with the fit and the fabric. It takes time for a new designer to get it right.”
Still, he remains the man of the hour with the international fashion press. Says Sarah Jane Hall, fashion editor of British Vogue, “Isaac Mizrahi has the classiest taste buds in America.”
