About

Mizrahi was born in Brooklyn, New York of Egyptian Jewish heritage. He is the cousin of rock guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, former player in the New York Dolls.

When Isaac was eight, his family moved to the middle-class Midwood section of Brooklyn. He contracted spinal meningitis during this time and his confinement was spent eating junk food and viewing television, especially old movies. The 1961 remake of Back Street, about an affair between a fashion designer and a married man, was a pivotal event in Mizrahi's development. The glamour of the fashion industry depicted in the movie became an inspiration to him to design clothes. When Isaac was 10 years old, Zeke Mizrahi bought a sewing machine for him. Isaac set up a workroom in the basement and created clothes for puppets for neighborhood birthday parties. At 13, Isaac was designing clothes for himself, his mother, and a close friend of his mother, Sarah Haddad.

His earliest design influences stemmed from his his mother's all-American wardrobe, which included clothing from Halston, Geoffrey Beene, Claire McCardell and Norman Norell.

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The Look

It is as if Mizrahi was challenged by distilling the most well-bred form of each garment to an understated glamor, whether tartan taken to a sensuous evening gown but still buckled as if Balmoral livery; pocketbooks and luggage ingeniously incorporated into clothing with the practical pocket panache of McCardell; or versions of high style in adaptations of men's bathrobes or sweatshirting used for evening. While Mizrahi was often commended for the youthfulness of his clothing, the praise was for the freshness of his perception, his ability to recalculate a classic, not just a market for young women. His interest in the Empire waistline; his practicality of wardrobe separates in combination; and his leaps between day and evening addressed all women equally. Mizrahi had clearly demonstrated the range of a commercially viable designer while at the same time demonstrating his simplifying glamor and the cool nonchalant charm of his smart (intellectually and aesthetically) clothing. Mizrahi had referred to his style as a "classic New York look," which presumably meant a casual American idiom, but inflected with big-city reserve and refinement. Mizrahi captured something of Manhattan chic and glamor of the 1940s and 1950s. His fashion was indescribably beautiful in subtlety and sophistication. Yet Mizrahi soon gave it all up to pursue another dream—performing.

Who Wears It

Cindy Crawford, Madonna, Sandra Bernhardt, Natasha Richardson, Liza Minelli, Oprah Winfrey, Uma Thurman

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