Isaac Mizrahi

Original color sketch for two designs from Mizrahi’s legendary Fall 1994 show for New York Fashion Week — the basis for the classic documentary Unzipped.

• Isaac Mizrahi (American).
• n.p.: n.p., 1994.
• “44” penned in red to lower portion of page and additionally annotated “Manon” on pencil beside.
• Signed "Isaac Mizrahi" and dated Fall 1994 in lower right image.
• Framed original graphite and pastel drawing on plain paper.

Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi’s 12 April 1994 runway show for New York Fashion Week was a sensation. It included every major supermodel of the period (Cindy Crawford, Niki Taylor, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell) and boasted the attendance of celebrities such as Robert De Niro and Richard Gere. The show also featured the use of a scrim that allowed the audience see the models changing between walks, lending the already electrifying collection the air of a theatrical event. The show was the climax of the 1995 documentary UNZIPPED, which made Mizrahi’s name as famous as contemporaries such as Calvin Klein and Jean Paul Gaultier. That film is widely viewed — along with ROGER AND ME, PARIS IS BURNING and HOOP DREAM — as one of the best nonfiction narrative films of the 1990s: “the gold standard of fashion films and one that perfectly captures one of the most vibrant and important moments in time in the New York fashion industry” (Danica La). 

This sketch, featuring studies for two designs — one a plaid or tweed mini-suit, the other likely one of the designer’s famous oversized coats (“beasts” Mizrahi called them) — was at least in part apparently intended for model Manon von Gerkan, as “Manon” is penciled to the lower portion of the image. A quintessential and evocative document from the “now-legendary catwalk spectacular” (La).