I.M.

by Isaac Mizrahi

  My friendship with Maira is a central part of my life. We collaborated a few times. She made prints for a spa collection in 1991, and then for my spring 1992 collection. At the de Young museum in San Francisco, I’d seen a show of Ballets Russes costumes that were hand painted by Matisse. Maira went to see them with my instructions “not to be influenced.” (Read: Please be strongly influenced.) I wanted dots and stripes and checks, painted by hand as only Maira (or Matisse) could do. I had the black-and-white patterns Maira produced printed—on a huge variety of grounds, from handkerchief linen to silk crepe to lightweight wool, made by one of the great mills in Italy, called Canepa, with which I collaborated regularly. When Anna came for the preview of that collection she gasped and said she was “thinking of prints exactly like these” even before she saw them. Those prints were what set off my friendship with Maira, and it was hard to tell what the admiration was based on, or where it began and ended. I once had a conversation with Tibor on the subject of Maira, who we agreed always knew the answer to everything. If one is unsure, one has merely to put it before her to know the answer. It doesn’t matter if it’s some sort of emotional trauma or an issue of type font. Maira knows the answer. It’s hard not to love someone like that.

  One day, sometime in the spring of 1993, she called to tell me the family was moving to Rome, something they’d been thinking about for a while. Tibor was collaborating on COLORS magazine with Oliviero Toscani, and Tibor and Maira decided to move there for a few years to fulfill their lifelong dream of living abroad. My sadness at the breaking apart of our little family was made bearable only by how happy and excited they were about the prospects of living in Rome. Nevertheless, the day they moved was a sad one for me. But an even sadder day came two years later when they moved back. Tibor was diagnosed with cancer. When he told me, I couldn’t accept it. I hung on to optimism bordering on denial. Tibor would beat it. The illness was a temporary thing, a subject to be made light of, his wheelchair and his cane merely subjects of design scrutiny. He set me up with his young, handsome doctor, and when that didn’t work out, on one of the last days I went to see him in Columbia University Medical Center, he said, “I always wished I could find a boy for you. If I get better it’s the first thing I’m going to do.” His illness was even material for jokes among us, a way of dealing with this horrific chapter that we all thought would end in triumph. But that was not to be. After a wrenching six- or seven-year battle, Tibor died.

  I was a pallbearer at his funeral. All I could think as several of us carried him to his grave was that I was burying my brother. Or uncle. Or father. There was no greater modern-day influence on me. It was a mentorship, a friendship—there was no separating the two. It was about thinking, about design, about taste, but mostly about love. It was the entire picture for us in those days. Work. Love. Work is life. Also death.

  Someone chartered a bus to the cemetery in Westchester, New York, where he’s buried close to George Gershwin. In true Tiborian fashion, hilarious and beautiful printed matter was given out on the bus, including handkerchiefs printed with arrows corresponding to the words “cry here.”

  27

  The life I led in those years can only be described as fabulous. Quickly though, the fabulousness felt like a distraction from the point, which, for me, is art. The parties, the celebrity, the fêting, were exhausting but necessary evils that felt like payment for the position I maintained in the fashion world. It took up too much of my precious work time. Also it seemed there were others who did this public thing way better than me; I noticed designers who were only too thrilled to go to every gala, every obligatory lunch. Flowers and gifts to editors were their stock-in-trade and they took to it naturally, whereas (at least in those early years) I relied on Nina to tell me what to do. She’d leave issues of Vogue and Elle on my desk flagged to my pages, along with the editor’s name to whom I would address a gushy note to accompany a massive flower arrangement. I showed up at dinners that Nina insisted I go to. She’d give me the names of the retailers or the publishers and I would wish them my best. After a while I got good at it. And after a longer while I did it so well people began to believe me. Then I began to believe myself.

  People were always asking me who my publicist was, as if we were aggressively going after publicity, but in reality we said no to articles and stories more than we said yes. I also sent regrets to more parties than I attended. Some of them I couldn’t say no to. One such obligation was the CFDA, which I hated more than the numerous High Holy Days in Brooklyn, and it seemed like they had as many events. I saw it as another cliquish way to homogenize designers and strip them of their individuality. I went to the yearly Met balls, a kind of chore, only to make Anna happy, often sitting next to her. Once Liz Tilberis hosted a party for Princess Diana at Lincoln Center, and I was invited to sit at their table with Kate Moss as my date. When I arrived to pick up Kate she kept me waiting for an hour, and we arrived terribly late, giggling like two delinquent schoolgirls. But it was much more of an offense than I realized. Liz was furious, this huge hole in the royal table of honor for over an hour. Liz didn’t speak to me for months, but somehow Kate—an English subject who should’ve known better than to keep a princess waiting—went unscathed.

  I was fêted in Tokyo by WWD, chosen to represent America in the “Best of Four” alongside Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix, and Franco Moschino, representing the pinnacles of our respective countries. It was a number of events that were a-blitz with media, culminating in a blockbuster fashion show. I was fêted at the American embassy in Paris when I launched my brand there, and André Leon Talley took me on a personal tour of Versailles, as if it were his own home. I will always associate the Deee-Lite song “Groove Is in the Heart” with that place, because that’s what André had blasting in the Mercedes limousine as we drove up to the palace. Another time I was asked by Louis Vuitton to design a bag for the one-hundredth anniversary of the eponymous printed canvas, another huge media event that took place in Paris. I got RuPaul, a good friend, to perform as part of the show. The idea was that Ru would be bathing in a blown-up bathtub version of the handbag I designed and break out into lip-synched song. At the dress rehearsal that same day a light fell on Ru’s head and he was rushed to the hospital but made it back in time for the show. That’s what I call a trooper!

  In Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and parts of Korea where I went when my brand launched there, I saw the insides of embassies and homes that were opulent and strange and luxurious—I could write a separate book about them. I was in Europe every other month—in Milan and Como working on fabrics, or in Bologna working on shoes. I had an Italian boyfriend, Antonio, whom I met all over Italy for trysts. London was a second home; my godson Alfred was brought up in Kensington and his parents and I were dear friends. I was in Los Angeles constantly, and for over a year I had a boyfriend there, Manfred, who looked like a young Warren Beatty and who I met twice a month at the Hotel Bel-Air for long weekends.

  And it wasn’t just the fashion world. Around that time I befriended a lot of great thinkers and influencers. I was set up on a date with Andrew Solomon, who became a dear friend. I got to know people like A. M. Homes and Matthew Marks. Through my obsession with dance I met a lot of great writers, including Susan Sontag. Herbert Muschamp, the fabulous architecture critic for the New York Times, was an influence on me. We went to parties and dinners together, and I was challenged by the excellence of his thinking. One day we drove to New Canaan, Connecticut, to visit Philip Johnson at the Glass House while he was still living there. Mr. Johnson and his friend David Whitney took us on a private tour of the house and the art gallery. At lunch that day Philip Johnson turned to me and said, “Mizrahi. What is that? Is it Jewish? Is it Arabic?” When I told him it was both he said, “Oh, lucky you. You get to root for whoever’s winning!”

  During this time I made clothes for every great star I had ever wished to dress. The likes of Diane Sawyer, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, you name it. Peo
ple like Robert De Niro and Madonna came to my shows.

  The first time I went to Oprah’s pied-à-terre at a glamourous New York City hotel for a fitting, my mind was blown. There, a staff of stylists came in and out with bags and bags of shoes from Manolo and boxes of jewelry from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, pondering this pump or sandal with that yellow-diamond necklace or pearl bracelet.

  On the first break I’d had in about four years after I began my company I received a call from Marina Schiano, a very fabulous and influential style editor working at Vanity Fair. She insisted that I go up to the Berkshires to meet with Mick Jagger, who was having trouble figuring out what to wear onstage for the Rolling Stones “Steel Wheels” tour. Tired as I was, I was also intrigued by the idea of dressing him; also I was scared that if I didn’t do as Marina said, she would never speak to me again. So I reluctantly cut my vacation short and made my way up there. I was kept waiting for a really long time before a young stylist ushered me into a room with racks and racks and racks of clothes that she had pulled for him to try on. All I had was a sketch pad. Finally he came in looking disheveled and sexy, yet so much older and smaller than I would have imagined. I was nervous, but he set me at ease right away, apologizing for the wait. We sat together and I sketched, presenting him with ideas. I suggested a cape, which he nixed. I suggested something inspired by a nineteenth-century British military uniform, and he said in his cockney accent: “I can’t wear that. Miss Bowie already did military on her last tour.” He nixed everything I suggested until Jerry Hall walked in the room, looking gorgeous, no makeup, barefoot, in cutoffs and a tank top. I think if it weren’t for her we never would have settled on anything. Finally we decided on a blue leather jacket and some tight sparkly pants. I made the pieces and sent them, he paid for them, but it was never acknowledged or spoken of again. And I never knew whether or not he wore the pieces.

  There were other times when minimal efforts paid off. The first time I ever met Sarah Jessica Parker was in 1997 on Conan O’Brien’s show. She was the first guest and I was the second, but she stayed for my interview. She was wearing a dress from my latest collection, which she bought at full price from Bergdorf Goodman. It was a black-and-white calf-length gingham cocktail dress with a white tulle crinoline. This was before we knew each other, and she said she saw that dress and “had to have it.” From that point on I loved her unconditionally.

  But of course there are times when even the most wonderful clients break your heart. People who wore my clothes regularly, like Sarah Jessica, Julia Roberts, Missy Elliott, would return dresses unworn after I’d spent days draping and sewing and fitting them. Sigourney Weaver presented me with my second CFDA award wearing an Armani dress, claiming my dress didn’t fit, but I knew it was because she didn’t like the one I sent.

  Once I fought with Janet Jackson’s stylist over a bill. At some point, someone set a precedent and didn’t tell me, and from that point on all designers were expected to provide free clothing. But I was used to being paid for my work. Whenever I’d worked with Janet in the past she’d paid, especially when the dress was custom made. So I mistakenly sent a bill to her stylist and a very uncomfortable row ensued that I hope never got back to Ms. Jackson. On the flip side, there was Nicole Kidman, who showed up at the Golden Globes one year looking gorgeous in a dress of mine, which her stylist had borrowed from my PR department. They’d forgotten to tell me, and it was a total, happy surprise.

  I’ve dressed executives like Tina Brown and Wendy Finerman, and major political figures like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. I made a few pieces for Elizabeth Taylor without any fuss. She was being shot by Bruce Weber for her White Diamonds ad campaign and I was sent some measurements that were top secret, faxed anonymously without any other words on the page. I looked at those measurements, and I knew immediately they were from some time in the 1970s and definitely no longer applied. Annica and I found the most recent photographs of Ms. Taylor and came up with our own size specs. A few months later she sent me one of the ads, featuring my satin trench coat, autographed. She sent a separate note saying what a pleasure it was to have clothes that “actually fit.”

  I got a lot of great notes from wonderful superstars, such as Candice Bergen and Aretha Franklin. I made clothes for the Queen of Soul in a dreamlike trance of fandom. I got regular notes from Sharon Stone, congratulating me on my latest collection and offering me little tips and criticisms as though she were a member of the fashion press. I published a big ad campaign for my secondary line, with pictures shot by Dewey Nicks and featuring my old acquaintance Diane Lane. Stone sent me a note saying if I had “wanted the Sharon Stone look in my ads, I should have reached out to her instead of copying her with a look-alike.” But the note of all notes came soon after I met Streisand and made a few things for her. A paparazzi picture appeared in WWD of her wearing one of my suits, a pinstripe wool, man-tailored job, double-breasted with peak lapels and wide-legged trousers. The editor got it wrong and credited the suit to Donna Karan. It was just at the time when Streisand and Karan were bonding publicly, so it was an easy mistake. A few weeks later, to my delight and astonishment, I got a note from Streisand with a clipping of her in the suit, acknowledging the mistake: “We know better who made that suit.” I told that story for months. When I told it I imitated Streisand’s assumed pronunciation of the word “bedduh.”

  * * *

  If collaboration and friendship are hard to separate, professional admiration is sometimes the key to love. In the same way that hating someone’s work makes it hard to be friends with them, loving their work can solidify a friendship. In the push-pull of obligation, it can be convincing to see yourself in a society column hugging someone you’ve idolized. It makes the opportunity for a friendship seem like a good idea even if it’s not. So many times I’ve admired someone’s work, then was lucky enough to meet them, then discovered we had no capacity for intimacy. I was always aware of the difference between people I love to be with and others that were more photo op than friend.

  I fell in love with two of my best friends before ever meeting them.

  In the early days of cable TV there was a talk show on Lifetime called Attitudes hosted by Linda Dano. It focused on style and featured all kinds of guests—movie stars, chefs, designers. In the first few years of my career I was booked onto that show each season and showed a small group from my latest collection. On one such appearance I was asked, of all the celebrities I hadn’t dressed who I would most like to. I answered the question honestly: Sandra Bernhard. And a few days later I got a call from her.

  She came to my studio, and the act of trying on clothes became an obvious metaphor for us: circling each other, trying each other out. She brought a friend with her whose personality fell away into the floorboards along with everyone else there that day. It was just Sandra and me, love at first sight: Veruschka’s face, Katharine Hepburn’s body, and the dangerous wit of Lenny Bruce. The challenge in dressing her was that it was hard to beat—or even match—how great she looked in her real life. I first saw her sometime around 1986, performing in a club in the East Village, in a man’s suit and sneakers. She often turned up at my studio in a white T-shirt and men’s trousers. No way to outdo that, try as I did.

  After that first fitting we had dinner or another social function together almost every night for weeks. She was getting ready to shoot the movie version of her one-woman show Without You I’m Nothing, and she was at my studio a lot, checking out clothes for it. I followed her around like a puppy—in her dressing room at gigs, and at the David Letterman show on a few occasions, watching her on the monitor off-stage. Our friends got to know each other. Maira and Tibor adored her and she was dating Sally Hershberger, who I really liked. She came to Brooklyn for dinner at my mother’s house a few times, and they hit it off. I stayed at her house in Los Angeles once or twice. I got to know her family—her mother, Jeanette, an artist, who was a constant source of inspiration and humor, and her incredibly handsome brothers. I
used to fantasize that her brother Mark, the one closest to my age, would turn gay, leaving the field open for a romantic relationship. (Sadly, he never did.)

  Sandra and I were gay at a time when we were still expected to be apologetic about it and we weren’t. We disdained those who didn’t share our pride and strength and probably came across as more hostile than we actually were. For the first few months of the friendship it felt like we were perched on a banquette at Indochine, on the edge of the world alone together, unapproachable, laughing. When Sandra was in New York City she stayed at the Royalton Hotel, which had just opened across the street from the Algonquin, and we had parties in her rooms with all kinds of glamourous supermodels and movie stars.

  One night Sandra and I and a bunch of our close friends went out for dinner in Chelsea before a dressy affair uptown where Sandra was the guest of honor. She was wearing a chiffon pantsuit from my latest collection with a thong underneath. This was early on in thong-technology and, like shoes that feel comfortable in the shop and betray you on the street, Sandra was having big thong problems that night. After dinner, walking to the event, Sandra had been pushed to her limits, and right there on the street, while the others made a circle around her, I helped her take the pants off—no easy feat in superhigh heels, then the thong came off and, naked from the waist down, she flung it into traffic on Ninth Avenue. She survived the rest of the night au naturel in chiffon pants sans thong. It was one of the biggest laughs we ever had.