Isaac Mizrahi Gets Unzipped — Again

We’ve all seen countless fashion documentaries by now — on Valentino, YSL, Galliano, March Jacobs, not to mention endless ones on Halston and Chanel. They’re lavishly funded, beautifully produced, and slickly marketed. But the one that started it all, back in 1995, had a tiny budget, a minuscule crew and a first-time director — and may still be the form’s iconic best. Isaac Mizrahi’s Unzipped, made largely on the fly, was spontaneous, hysterically funny and almost defiantly unstructured. It was magical.

The first real behind-the scenes look at the making of a fashion collection — from conception and planning through model casting and Mizrahi’s Fall 1994 runway show — Unzipped made a huge splash when it arrived in theaters in August 1995, winning over film critics and fashionistas alike. But then, after finishing its run, it just disappeared. Caught up in a tangle of rights and ownership issues, it’s been nearly impossible to find for some three decades.

Until now.

After a restored print was screened at Sundance in January 2025 — nearly 30 years to the day it first premiered at the festival and won an Audience Award — Janus Films acquired North American rights and will finally be rereleasing it in a limited run Sept. 25 before a national rollout in October.

It’s been a while, but you probably recall the basics: The movie, shot by Mizrahi’s boyfriend at the time, Douglas Keeve, opens with the designer reeling from bad reviews of his Spring 1994 collection, then follows Mizrahi as he prepares for what will be his triumphant Fall 1994 show.

“I was a photographer — I’d shot Isaac for Esquire — and there was a certain spark there,” recalls Keeve of how he came to make the doc. “Everyone was obsessed with Isaac then.”

Before it picked up that Sundance Audience Award, it wasn’t clear Unzipped would even get a first release. “When it was done, we had some screenings,” says Nina Santisi, Mizrahi’s longtime creative adviser and an executive producer on the film. “ICM wanted to dump it somewhere. But it got into Sundance, and then Harvey Weinstein bought it for distribution, and it got into Cannes after that.”

And now, like so much in fashion, it’s making a comeback.

On the eve of Unzipped‘s rerelease, I sat down with Mizrahi — now 30 pounds lighter thanks to GLP-1s — for a dishy chat about making the movie, his acting ambitions and how he always manages to stay one step ahead of the crowd (“Zeitgeist, darling. Zeitgeist!”).

One of the best things about Unzipped is how whimsically unconstructed it is. You sing, you skip around, gossip with models, hum the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme, dish it up with John Galliano and André Leon Talley …

That’s why so many modern films are so boring — they’re overstructured. People making them are only thinking about having a hit. They’re not emotionally invested in the process — just financially invested. The arc in Unzipped is organic: We start with the drama of a bad review. Then I create the next collection, fit the models, schmooze with fashion people, tell stories, kvetch with my mother [Sarah Mizrahi will turn 99 on Sept. 17]. Then the show. It ends with a great review. So, what actually happened itself creates the drama.

Where has Unzipped been hiding all these 30 years? Why couldn’t we see it?

There were crazy issues with who had the rights. Hachette Filipacchi, publisher of Elle magazine, helped produce it. Later, Hachette was purchased by Hearst. No one knew who owned it. I think there was a DVD made a long time ago.

Before it came out, did you have any idea it could turn into this epochal thing? A time capsule of a singularly iconic time: the ’90s New York fashion world?

We really had no idea about anything. Douglas just shot me everywhere I went — for years! In the interim, Scorsese made a 20-minute doc on Giorgio Armani. Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter came out just after Unzipped. It was the zeitgeist. We didn’t know what it would or could become. This was before reality TV! Documentaries then were about little violin players in Vienna — a bit slow. Unzipped was fast and fun.

The movie’s surprisingly intimate, with very personal interactions with your mother, you smoking, being goofy, playing piano a little off-key …

I told Douglas to take the bad piano part out! But the thing about performing: The minute you think you’re acting like a fool — I say this all the time about social media — the more people like it, love it and share it.

Where did you come up with that Nanook of the North concept for your fall show? You based it off a 1922 silent black-and-white Eskimo documentary?

It might have been on TCM. There they were, Inuit Eskimos — a whole culture of people I’d never seen before — beautiful people! Right after that, I watched some movie from the 1950s: women with waists the size of nickels and gigantic hair. So the vision for the collection became “cheesecake meets Call of the Wild.” I wanted to do fur pants, like Eskimos wore — but I thought PETA would kill me. The girls would say I made them look fat. So I combined big coats with very small dresses.

Is your least favorite part of the movie when you discover Jean Paul Gaultier had done an Eskimo collection before you did?

Well, I’m not sure. Having my mother in so much of the film [is what] bothers me. It’s such a private, private thing — and it’s right there. On film. Living in that relationship for the past 64 years, it’s layered. It’s a very tender thing for me to see.

The stars who appear in the documentary really dial up the drama. Richard Gere. Roseanne Barr. Sandra Bernhardt. And the supermodels …

Cindy, Naomi, Linda, Christy, Kate Moss, Shalom Harlow. After watching it a million times, I almost forgot there were other people in the movie! I was thinking: “Oh my God, it’s such a personal portrait of me, what are people going to think?” But the poster with me, Linda and Naomi, shot by Mario Testino, reminded me that those girls — that’s why so many people came to see it in the first place! When your co-stars bring the audience, it’s a lesson in humility, darling! A lesson in humility!

Linda Evangelista comes off like such a bitch during and after the runway show: “Isaac, you always give me the worst shoes!” and “You must hate white women” — because she thinks Naomi got better shoes.

I love Linda! She’s a wicked, funny person. A lot of that was mugging — she knew how to work the camera. A woman who worked for me once asked Linda where we should send a box of clothes — she said, “Oh, just send them to the Concorde first-class lounge. They’ll find me.”

Fashion people were shocked when you left Seventh Avenue and went into show business, hosting a show on Oxygen, performing cabaret and appearing in a couple of Woody Allen films. But they were always telling you, “Isaac, you should be in show business.”

I was doing female impersonations when I was 8 years old. I was a big ham — I went to Performing Arts High School. I felt that was what I was supposed to do. Then I chickened out. I decided it wouldn’t work if I didn’t look like Robert Redford or Paul Newman. And I’m really good at clothes. I thought it would be an easier job to get.

You did a collection for Target early on — before anyone. Now you’re the creative director of Target. Zac Posen at The Gap. Great designers going mass.

Zeitgeist, darling! Zeitgeist! I thought that was the way to go 25 years ago when I designed for Target. My job there now is called creative director at large: overseeing the design of the fashion product, kind of steering them back into their own creation — this “design for all” thing. Because then Zara did high-fashion collabs. Uniqlo happened. Everyone suddenly had a collaboration with everyone. I’m trying to center it again — so design is the most important thing in that store.

Last year, you were in Marty Supreme …

Well, that’s not new. I’ve been doing roles in movie and television for a very long time. It’s very difficult for people in fashion to believe you can sing or act. Meanwhile, Pharrell Williams, the Olsen girls, Sarah Jessica Parker all crossed over. I still cringe a little when I think of my showbiz self — I never thought I’d ever be cast. And here I am, on GLP-1, trying to get my life together.

And now Unzipped is coming back. Do you remember the reviews the first time it came out?

The one I remember most is Rex Reed. He said something about me being “hirsute.” Darling, I’m completely smooth — there’s no hair anywhere on my body. I don’t know where that came from.

Well, it’s going to get reviewed again with the rerelease.

I know, I know. I can’t stop people from not liking it. I don’t relish that, I don’t look forward to that. I guess I’ll have to be a grown-up. I don’t relish that, either.

This story appeared in the Sept. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.