Refashioning the Talk Show

Hair askew and hands aflutter, designer Isaac Mizrahi is nervously standing in a kitchen, ready to tackle his next creative mission.

Squealing and whining, he whisks and grates and stirs and tastes before donning a pair of hefty oven mitts to present a deep dish of baked macaroni and cheese.

Not exactly the masterpiece the fashion world probably expects of its former wonder boy. But, considering the unexpected turns Mizrahi’s life has taken in the last three years, perhaps it should be.

Since Chanel Inc. shuttered the celebrated designer’s fashion house in 1998, Mizrahi has flaunted a knack for chameleonic surprises. He’s played a small role in Woody Allen’s “Celebrity” and starred in an off-Broadway one-man cabaret show titled “LES MIZrahi.”

Now, the 39-year-old Brooklyn native takes fans along on his culinary foray as part of his latest stab at reinvention--a weekly talk show on Oxygen network. In “The Isaac Mizrahi Show,” touted as a “documentary-style” series, fans can watch as he designs a dress for “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker, has manicures with “Saturday Night Live” cast member Ana Gasteyer and goes clubbing with actress Rosie Perez.

“I’ll tell you something,” Mizrahi says conspiratorially in a phone interview from New York, “this is, like, the best job I ever had. I feel like it’s my calling. I always knew that I was born to do something like this, with communication and personalities. I just can’t get enough of it.”

The question is, will his viewers feel the same?

“Hi, I’m Isaac Mizrahi,” he begins in his premiere episode. “My show is about people--talking to people and doing things while talking to people, all kinds of insane, fun things.”

The idea for the show grew out of Mizrahi’s belief that his friends and colleagues are fascinating people who sometimes need a different forum than a regular talk show to let their fabulousness shine through.

“When I was doing fittings, the conversations I had with people were always so fabulous, or when I was sitting there knitting or cooking with somebody, the conversation always inevitably turned to some fantastic stuff,” Mizrahi explains. “I just thought this would be a better way to talk to people, to get things you wouldn’t get if you were sitting around just talking about a project that someone’s promoting.”

And so Mizrahi dreamed up a show where he could pick guests he’d love to hang out with and figure out fun things to do with them. Then he began conversations with Dori Ann Berinstein, executive producer for Oxygen.com. Berinstein was executive producer of 1995’s documentary “Unzipped,” which followed Mizrahi through a fashion season and won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Berinstein says she had always believed that Mizrahi belonged in front of a camera.

“He has an amazing talent that really needed to be onstage and screens small and large,” she says. “Isaac is one of a kind. He’s a brilliant conversationalist, he just knows so much about so many different topics, he sings and he’s a creator himself. This show is so much about following the creative process of something, whether it’s designing a dress or doing a photo shoot, and Isaac is inspired by people who are as creative as he is.”

In addition to seeing him design the 1940s-style black lace dress that Parker wore to the opening night of “The Producers” in April, viewers also can follow him as he shops for stilettos with Emmy Award-winning actress Bebe Neuwirth and creates costumes for the American Ballet Theater.

Some, however, wonder whether Mizrahi has enough popular appeal for his talk show to succeed.

“People in fashion miss him, but I don’t know how well the rest of America relates to him,” says Phillip Bloch, a Hollywood celebrity stylist and friend of Mizrahi’s. “He’s great at what he does and everything he does is funny and I appreciate it. But his world is a little selective, shall we say. In his show, it’s like, ‘Oh, [fashion doyenne] Polly Mellen came over to my house,’ but who knows who Polly Mellen is other than people in fashion? I’ll watch him; I think he’s great. But it could be a very selective audience.”

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Many, however, still are mourning the demise of his fashion house. Mizrahi, who was known for a playful femininity that once led him to attach fur doughnuts to women’s suits, was widely thought to be following in the successful footsteps of Calvin Klein or Donna Karan.

“He added a lot to the American fashion cycle,” says Kal Ruttenstein, senior vice president of fashion direction at Bloomingdale’s. “He’s a big talent. We always had a customer following for him and we were disappointed when he decided to move on. He had great clothes and great color sense. The clothes were very young, very luxurious and very modern. We’d love to see him back.”

Although Mizrahi was the charismatic darling of the fashion press and retailers, his business began to falter when he couldn’t connect with enough customers. Isaac, his less expensive collection, was discontinued after just three seasons. And of his main line, only a reported 50% to 60% sold at full price. By comparison, other designer collections typically were selling 70% to 80% at full price.

Finally, in October 1998, Chanel pulled the plug on Mizrahi’s house. Last year, he filed a $30-million lawsuit against Chanel for breach of contract. He says he can’t comment on the lawsuit, but notes that he does not miss fashion.

“I never liked fashion,” he says. “I like women, I like textiles, I like clothes. But I’m sort of anti-fashion. I like doing things like making a dress for Sarah Jessica Parker. But that’s not fashion, that’s just making a dress for Sarah Jessica Parker.”

As for a return to his fashion roots, Mizrahi remains as unpredictable as ever.

“I say stick around,” he says. “It’s a long life ahead, so who knows?”

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Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Co. newspaper.