I.M.

by Isaac Mizrahi

  We didn’t really know what making a documentary of this kind would require. So Douglas shot probably ten times as much footage as was needed for the seventy-minute movie we ended up with. Also we had no real end for the movie until the day after the fall fashion show. I don’t think you could get funding now for anything that wasn’t plotted from beginning to end.

  There were so many surprises. Lots of days we didn’t know what would happen—luckily a lot did. And even luckier, Douglas was there to capture it. It helps when your boyfriend is the chief shooter and it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for him to be wielding a camera in the most intimate moments. Moments in bed. In the bathtub. Moments that made the movie what it is. Other days we followed a well-planned shot list, and some of those things never made it in. Faye Dunaway came in to look at clothes for a very short-lived TV show she was cast in, and Douglas had a full crew that day. She was there for hours and tried on every suit and day-dress in the place, and it was all documented. When she liked the way something looked she’d speak of herself in the third person. She’d say: “Oh, this is very Faye!” right at the mirror. We crafted a segment for the movie that became more of a tribute to Dunaway than anything else, crosscut with footage from Mommie Dearest in the same way clips from other movies like The Red Shoes and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? had appeared. In the end we cut the segment because we couldn’t get a license to use the Mommie Dearest footage.

  Douglas and Nina worked with a woman named Paula Heredia editing the film, and I checked in every few days to see rough cuts of segments. The hardest part of that was being a subject and maintaining any sort of objectivity. But I did it. I developed the ability to see myself as a fictional character, suppressing the urge to scream and call a halt to the proceedings. I saw this deprecating vision of myself as a positive thing—being the butt of a good joke.

  As often happens on films, we went way over our deadline and spent more money than we’d agreed upon. I made an ill-fated trip to LA to meet with a young agent from C.A.A., which Hachette hired to represent the movie. This agent went on to become one of the most powerful people in Hollywood but, sadly, he did not understand my vision for Unzipped. In the middle of my pitch he stopped and asked with a blank stare, “You mean like a wet T-shirt video to give away with subscriptions to Elle?”

  To keep things from falling apart, I promised the backers that if we couldn’t get the film finished by the designated time I would take all financial responsibility for it. I think it was something like half a million dollars, which I absolutely did not have. I’d venture to say that the terror I felt at being ruined financially is what ultimately got that movie finished. We lost Paula to another project, so we had daily meetings and screenings, and it was Douglas himself, prodded by Nina and me, who finished the final edit.

  Toward the end of the project we all fought bitterly. Nina, Douglas, and I were at the ends of our ropes. It became clear that my relationship with Douglas wouldn’t survive the movie. At a crucial point toward the end, our funds were short again, a scary make-or-break moment. I remember coming close to a nervous breakdown in the car with Nina one afternoon—I shouted at her with such force that both she and I got frightened. Unbeknownst to Chanel, I approved an extra fifty thousand dollars, which I knew would be covered by the budget of my following collection. From the first mentions of the project I felt that my partners at Chanel really didn’t understand Unzipped or the benefits of doing something like it, so I kept most news of it a secret from them. Everything was on the line for me: my career as depicted in the movie, my relationship, and my reputation as someone who could produce something good.

  We handed in the finished movie just hours before the first screening. Hachette and Bergdorf Goodman partnered to host a publicized event at a movie theater on West Fifty-seventh Street, I can’t remember what the theatre was called at the time. (It is now the Directors Guild Theatre.) The entire fashion cognoscenti attended. It was the first time in my life I thought about running away. And then the lights went down and the movie started. Laughter. More laughter. And even more. And that good silence when people are listening. At the end there were people cheering, standing. After all the fights and horrible feelings we harbored for each other, Nina, Douglas, and I sat in the back of that theatre holding hands in solidarity. We made something great, and it would bind us together for life.

  The following months were like a dream of a nightmare. Unzipped went first to Sundance, thanks to Nina’s labors, where it won the Audience Award for best documentary. And there, in those soggy mountains, with every executive present from both coasts, layered up against the melting snow, finally, Unzipped was sold. All the money recouped and repaid, I felt like a captive being let out of debtor’s prison. Miramax bought the movie on the third day of the festival, after a short bidding war. I met Harvey Weinstein a few times during the course of that negotiation never realizing what a monster he was. I was too absorbed in what was going on in my life, my relationship with Douglas, and especially the sale of the movie. Of all the companies bidding on Unzipped, we sold it to Harvey because he assured us it would stay intact without having to be reedited, lengthened, or changed in any way. Years later I would see him out and about and he’d say to me “What a great movie we made together!” and I’d think to myself, we made? You mean I made and you bought?

  It was all very bittersweet for me that spring and summer. There was no joy being at Sundance, even with such a great success, which had been clutched from the jaws of defeat. I was staying in a separate room from Douglas, and I couldn’t help feeling the irony of that fact. Too many awful things were said in the final days of editing, and we were clear with each other that it was over from that point. Then Unzipped went to the Cannes Film Festival. Estranged from Douglas, I promised Harvey Weinstein I would show up, and I did. He booked me a huge, gorgeous suite overlooking the Mediterranean that felt to me like the loneliest place in the world. I flew in with Linda Evangelista, Kyle MacLachlan, and Naomi Campbell, who were there to soak it all up. It was the most glamourous and amazing screening, with loads of big movie stars in attendance. And it was all about me. Yet there was no way to enjoy any of it. That is one occasion I will never look back on fondly, no matter how much time passes and perspectives widen.

  After the screening at Cannes we got a standing ovation. Harvey, Sharon Stone, and I hosted a star-studded benefit dinner for AMFAR at La Palme d’Or, one of the most exclusive restaurants in the entire world. I sat next to Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant, and all I could think about the whole night was the irony, the question gnawing at me: What came first, love or Unzipped? Did Douglas use me to get this movie made? Did I use him? That night, those questions presented themselves in all their delusion, as a bitter trade-off: this massive success in exchange for a life with Douglas.

  About two years ago, in tandem with a large-scale, midcareer survey show that took place at the Jewish Museum in New York, Unzipped was revived for a few showings, and I agreed to do a Q&A with Bruce Goldstein, my friend who runs Film Forum. I couldn’t watch the whole movie, so I showed up just toward the end and watched the last few minutes standing in the back. The end of the movie has me walking home to my apartment, Douglas filming me, having been to the kiosk on the corner to get my reviews. I regarded myself as I was twenty years earlier. I was simple and young and I could move in any direction I wanted. I had nothing. I wanted nothing. I was safe because the future was before me. Now, in the middle of everything, it’s so much harder. I think more and I act less. I’m not as sure about what I want as I am about what I don’t want.

  Then, in the last moment of the movie, we’re walking back to my apartment and Douglas, off camera, asks, “Was it worth it?” I answer without thinking: “It’s always worth it. Even when it sucks it’s worth it.” I watched in the dark and cried.

  29

  In those days documentaries about designers didn’t exist. There was a real snoozer about Giorgio Armani that came across as a vanity pro
ject, or a cross-promotional opportunity, more than anything. Unzipped was a breakout hit. It had a theatrical release, which no one thought would amount to anything but which actually did a nice business for Miramax. It has since had a great deal of exposure on video and TV and has presumably made a great deal of money (nary a penny of which did I ever see). As much of a success as it was, it didn’t really serve me well at the time. I was good at drawing attention to my brand, creating a culture for the clothes, a reason for people to relate to them and buy them, but there was no basic support for my clothing business. Still no production or distribution channels. And any licensing begun at that time was way too late. It felt like the Tower of Babel was ready to topple.

  When I signed the agreement with Chanel I knew they were the number-one luxury brand in the world, and I assumed they had some sort of a plan to grow my business. I think they thought I had a plan. It turned out neither of us did. I was a designer, not a merchant. I might have collaborated with business visionaries, marketing people, advertising agents, but that was never in the offing. After the sixth or seventh year in business with Chanel, it became clearer and clearer that my business was coasting on my ability to hold the attentions of the fashion press. I parted company with Sarah, which was a blessing and a curse. While she was in over her head, she supported me and was loyal to our cause. Others were brought in who made attempts to guide the business, but by that point it was too late. Because the economics of the deal changed so radically, a new contract was drawn up. Even as my business was misguided, it was growing, and I had not foreseen that building such a business, with no retail or licensing revenues to help, was such a money-losing proposition. When I entered into the deal I still had controlling shares. Over the course of the following seven years I would lose more and more control because of the growing losses. Eventually I lost control completely.

  It wasn’t Chanel’s intention to stack the decks against me. The big discrepancy in vision was between the way business in the world at large was conducted, versus the way Chanel did business in the ideal world they had built for themselves, starting all the way back in the early 1920s. So I continued making these elaborate, attention-getting fashion shows and having what turned out to be fruitless meetings with Chanel executives who were trying to be helpful. Eventually they did little else besides monitor the diminishing returns as reflected on spreadsheets. They were full of useless advice, and were not at liberty to lift a finger to help. As far as building a sustainable business was concerned, it was a real waste of those years.

  Six months before my thirty-seventh birthday, completely out of the blue, I got a call from Bernard Arnault from LVMH, Chanel’s archrival. Needless to say, a brief, rather awkward conversation ensued. Follow-up meetings with his people outlined a job to remake Louis Vuitton. Like so many others who continued to design their own collections while designing other revival collections, I was courted for the job at Louis Vuitton, which wouldn’t preclude designing my own collection. One problem would be the irreconcilable differences in place between LVMH and Chanel. They were competitors to the point where some might consider them mortal enemies. But I brought the offer to the attention of Charles Heilbronn and Alain Wertheimer, who seemed amused. They humored me, and for a moment I thought they might be interested in reconciling the feud. Plans were made for me to go to Paris with Charles to meet with Mr. Arnault, but at the last minute the meeting was canceled, and it was never rescheduled. I suppose it was just too big a fissure for the two mammoth companies. I was thrilled by the thought of all that prestige and all those clothes and fashion shows. Also by the thought of conquering Paris, which in itself was a double-edged sword; the place the entire world perceives as the center of fashion, and a place I’d grown to dislike. But to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really want the job. I was bored with the status quo of my life, interested in adding diverse projects—expanding into show business—not adding more of the same. My inborn need to leave the party just as it’s peaking began to set in.

  At that time, fashion as I knew it was taking a turn that I didn’t understand. My fabulous shows were adored less and less. It was becoming more and more about expressionless, underfed young girls who can’t smile as they barrel down the runway. Not only was the physique thinning, the intellect of fashion was also going anorexic. It felt to me like the editors held private meetings on their way back to New York on the Concorde after the European collections, and made secret decisions about the way clothes had to look—and especially about the way they couldn’t look. Even before my clothes hit the runway, they were wrong. The world was closed to my ideas. I could feel the collective editorship in the audience staring at their notebooks and pouting through my shows, which they only attended because they felt obliged. The joy was drained out of the subject. “Heroin Chic” was in, and I was out. At some point in 1997 someone convinced me to hire a stylist to work with me on the shows, and it was a great struggle allowing any other opinions, but I had to try anything. Finally, at one of my last shows, the stylist put a sign on the wall for the models that said NO SMILING PLEASE. Now I’m not one who likes big fake smiles, but that sign felt ominious. It might have said instead: The End.

  * * *

  Late in 1998 I was called to the Chanel headquarters. I didn’t expect what was to follow. It was a freakishly cold September day, and the usually idyllic view of the park from the offices was obscured by a thick fog. I was shown into the main conference room, where Charles Heilbronn and Michael Rena were waiting for me. There was very little small talk. Alain Wertheimer was conspicuously absent. Michael Rena opened a folder and produced a shallow stack of papers with numbers on them. Without exception, I understood not a word or digit on them. “At this point we have to do something about these numbers. We’re not prepared for you to lose more than three million dollars a year. You’ll have to make cuts. If you keep your losses below three million a year, you can go on for the rest of time.”

  At that moment everything in the room froze, voices muted, nothing moved. I had the feeling of being stuck in time. What I had agreed to ten years earlier, the hope that this partnership might push me over the top, had been misconstrued on my end and theirs. All I could think, sitting there in that stifling conference room, was that the better part of my life those years, every great idea, every great effort, all the love that was poured into those collections was reduced to a sad stack of spreadsheets.

  When I got home I saw Tibor. My destiny lay in running into him at that moment. We sat in the lobby, which is very odd considering we could have gone to either of our apartments. I described the scene I had just come from and posed the dilemma. I told him how confused I was, how much I wanted to stop functioning for a minute and contemplate. I confessed everything to Tibor that night, including my deepest fears about letting go. About having looked up to people like Geoffrey Beene, George Balanchine, Stephen Sondheim, even my best friend Mark Morris, people who are masters of their crafts, and the delusions I had about becoming a master myself. I realized at that moment that designing clothes forever was not in the cards for me. So many great artists reach a pinnacle in their achievements and spend the rest of their days building on those ideas, masterfully making work that refers back to that original genius. Especially in fashion, that is what you do. But it wasn’t just new fabric, new clothes I sought, it was a whole different world. Sitting there in that lobby talking to Tibor was better than any therapy session. Listening to myself talk, I started letting the idea of mastery slip away in favor of artistic peace of mind.

  At the end of the monologue Tibor asked me a simple question: “What do you really want to do? We got in the elevator and by the end of the short ride my mind was made up. “I’m closing,” I said. And Tibor smiled and shrugged. “I knew you would,” he said. “It’s so much more interesting.”

  * * *

  That night I sat in the bathtub feeling free. I knew what I wanted would not come in the form of running that company for the next twenty years an
d when I told Charles Heilbrunn of my decision he respected it. Frankly I think everyone at Chanel was a bit relieved. I knew the next chapter of my life would be about something more important. I was about to embark on developing my talent as a thinker, a writer, a performer. Guy Culver, Maria Napoli—the words of all the psychics were coming back to me now. “If by the time you’re thirty you’re not pursuing a career in show business, it will pursue you.” If five years late, this was destiny fulfilling at least half that promise. The really difficult half. The half that got me to start thinking differently.

  My practical nature kicked in, and I felt almost embarrassed that people might actually think I cared about the exact minute when shoulder pads or a skirt length became obsolete; the relevance of opaque hosiery; when bright-red lips were preferable to nude-colored ones. I wanted to write an editorial and send it to the New York Times apologizing for being such a fraud, pretending to care about such foolishness, while at the same time setting the record straight about all the love imbued in my clothes. I wanted the world to understand how I detested the idea of fashion—that exclusionary business of making women feel their identities were obsolete in order to sell them new stuff. What I loved, what I was driven by all those years, was nothing less than my love for new thoughts, beautiful textiles, women. Now I set out to prove that this love would conquer all.