Sherry Dean, Entertainment Correspondent
August 10, 1995
NEW YORK (CNN) -- It's a film that features cameos from
Richard Gere, Liza Minelli, Roseanne and Eartha Kitt. It
co-stars the world's top supermodels from Cindy Crawford to
Naomi Campbell. But the real star of the new feature-length
documentary "Unzipped" is fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi and
the clothing he creates. "Everything's frustrating," he
claims, "except designing clothes. That's not frustrating.
That's really beautiful and liberating."
Mizrahi said the movie shows the human side of people involved in the creative process. "What I'm so glad it says on its own, exclusively from me, is that fashion designers are not cold, unfeeling sorts of people who live in their own ivory towers. They're actually human beings," he said. "In other words, you can have good taste and not have ice water running through your veins."
Did Mizrahi ham it up for the movie? "Oh, everyone says, `You were great in the movie,' and I think they're crazy. I wasn't doing anything," he said. But whatever Mizrahi was or wasn't doing, he must have done something right. Critics who said they went to see "Unzipped" expecting to hate it say they loved it, and it won the audience award for Best Documentary at the Sundance Festival.
Mizrahi is taking his newfound film stardom in stride,
continuing to do what he does best -- designing. On a
tour of his Manhattan showroom, he gave a sneak preview of
his newest creation, the duvet-covered down coat. It's an
adaptation of a duvet cover that goes on a down comforter.
"You've never seen it before because I made it up," Mizrahi
said. "Because I'm a genius." He said he designed "every
single inch of the fabric" in his collection.
Mizrahi feels "Unzipped" proves what he's always believed: Fashion is a form of entertainment.
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