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He captured the essence of the modern urban woman
with his black boucle suit paired with a white muscle-T. It was
so very now. And it was a startling Audrey Hepburn–Breakfast
at Tiffany’s moment when Caroline T. came out in a stunning
black taffeta cocktail dress accessorized with white elbow length
gloves and black flat heels. To die for! He sent out Tiiu in an
absolutely stunning black lace flamenco gown and Ujjwala in a brown
and plum embroidered lace flamenco-style gown with multicoloured
layers of ruffles on the hem.
He lay his claim to street fashion by showing
what he called ‘superjeans’ and ‘superkhakis’, which in essence
were pieces influenced by the urban street styling of Goth kids
you see in New York City’s East Village’s St Mark’s Square. He continued
the high–low theme by pairing these pieces with tops (a grey flannel
lace cardigan, for one) from his Isaac Mizrahi New York line. High–low
indeed.
Liya has never looked as pretty and delicate as
she did in his white Kotur shirt and pink double face faille skirt
ensemble.
Naturally, he most excelled at evening where he
pulled out all the stops. I simply adored Natasha in his princess-worthy
sandalwood faille and field-painted ballerina gown, and his colour-blocked
double-faced wool column dress (the one worn by Selma Blair to the
CFDA Fashion Awards) looked even better
the second time around. Liya looked like a dream in his orange rock
candy bugle beaded cocktail dress, Luca matched her point for point
in his hand-knitted cashmere lace cardigan over a double-faced wool
miniskirt; and Tiiu was nothing less than a goddess in his dress
of lapis, midnight and swimming pool blue bugle beads. He closed
out the show with a succession of gowns that blew my mind, staring
with Caroline W. in an ‘ice flower’ white hand-embroidered lace
gown, Caroline T. in a ‘snow angels’ white dress of silk illusions
and mink, Hana in a dress he called the ‘prettiest dress on Earth’
and ending with Daria in a midnight blue ‘Too Too’ tutu ball skirt
paired with a white wrapped cotton halter-sash shirt. Picture Sharon
Stone at the Oscars in her then-husband’s white Gap shirt and her
Vera Wang ball gown skirt, and you will have an idea of what a beautiful
and fitting finalé that was.
Mr Mizrahi did everything right in the presentation
of this collection. The accessories (loved those red fox gauntlet
fur gloves!), the shoes (ballet slippers from his own line of shoes
for Target), and the fur pieces (made possible from a licensing
agreement with Alixandre Furs (a third generation family-owned company
that is an institution in the fur industry) all contributed to his
achieving this well deserved success. •
Phillip D. Johnson is features’ editor
of Lucire.
Footnote
Mr Mizrahi is the winner of four Council of Fashion Designers
of America (CFDA) awards; and his
irresistible charm and natural flare for the dramatic made him an
household name in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The award-winning
documentary, Unzipped, the season-long story of the designer
at work producing his 1994 fall collection, is one of my favourite
movies of all time. He has his own television show on cable’s Oxygen
Network, has appeared in several movies (besides Unzipped),
designed costumes for Broadway (a revival of Clare Luce Boothe’s
The Women starring Cynthia Nixon) and most recently starred
in his own one-man off-Broadway show, Les Mizrahi.—PDJ
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