Isaac Mizrahi: Isaac Does the Oscars

Fashion and screen star Isaac Mizrahi dresses up Young Hollywood for the Academy Awards, explains why the next big fashion thing for young stars will be neatness, and, while he's at it, announces "If Stanley Kubrick calls me, I'm all his. Look what he did for Sue Lyon."

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Throughout last year's swell movie Unzipped, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi so effortlessly and hilariously invoked lines, situations and theme songs from everything from The Red Shoes to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" that I was able to diagnose him instantly as a fellow victim of movie damage. You know the syndrome: the major events in your life are all underscored in your mind by the soundtrack music of Bernard Herrmann. Miklos Rozsa or John Williams; you can't travel by train without fantasizing that some fabulous stranger might seduce you the way Eva Marie Saint seduced Cary Grant on the 20th Century Limited. Or, as in Mizrahi's case, you go to a Ouija board for creative inspiration and it does things like spell out M-A-R-N-I-E.

Yeah, Mizrahi is majorly movie-damaged, alright. And so, I'm thinking, as we face each other in the third-floor SoHo office of his ever-growing fashion empire, he is just the guy to critique Oscar fashion in general, and Young Hollywood Oscar fashion in particular. As a matter of fact, I'd like to be front and center at an Oscar show that he designed from the first plunging neckline to the last great pair of shoes, "Isaac." I say, "the Oscar show is all yours. Stage it, produce it, dress it to death. Run with it!"

Mizrahi's eyes go dreamy, and suddenly he's Steven Spielberg, Flo Ziegfeld and Ross Hunter all rolled into one. "What's fabulous about the Oscars," he declares, "is seeing people respond to winning or not winning. So I'd underproduce it, make it like Kitty Carlisle's house, which is in this great old building on Park Avenue, [where] she has shades with little crochet pull things on the end, a Steinway, some fantastic antiques, and that's all. No bar where seven lights go on and say. 'Hello. Thank you for opening the bar.' New York is turning into 'Dynasty,' a theme park, and here Kitty Carlisle's place is perfectly underproduced.

Now, the Oscars you have to make fabulous and simple because the content is interesting. It can't be something where people's attitudes are, well, nobody really wants to be here. And that means no bad song-and-dance numbers. I would hold it in some beautiful, paneled little room like at the Algonquin Hotel, with framed portraits of great old actors on the walls. People would be seated at lovely little tables. Men would have to go in tuxedos and women would have to be dressed very elegantly." I point out to him that what he's describing is the awards ceremony in All About Eve. "Exactly what it should be," he asserts.

OK, now that we know where the Oscar show should take place, how should Young Hollywood dress for the occasion? And if Mizrahi could put some of the young stars -- say, Winona Ryder -- in his own gowns, which ones would they be? "Winona Ryder is so beautiful and young, you could put her in anything of mine," he observes. "But my favorite thing for her to wear would be a gown I made for the spring collection, a rock-color gazar with crystal beading around the neck."

Sandra Bullock? "I'd love to see her in a black fitted suit I made, with a high neck, very plain and austere, with her hair straight back and no makeup."

Gwyneth Paltrow? "She is so beautiful, but she's undefined at the moment. She could be Grace Kelly if she wants to be. That's how I'd dress her."

Uma Thurman? "I put her in a dress once and it was so beautiful, I'd love to see her just wear that for the rest of her life. It was a black, sequined, backless dress that had beading around the neck, the armholes and the back. Oh my God. it worked -- big time -- just because of her attitude."

Nicole Kidman? "Absolutely anything I design would work for Nicole Kidman, because she's not a young thing, she's a woman."

Alicia Silverstone? "She has such beautiful skin, I'd put her in something bare, like a crystal beaded, pink gazar dress that Linda Evangelista just wore in my show. It was like something the Supremes would have worn in their glory.''

Juliette Lewis? "I love her. I always want to see her looking diminutive, like she's wearing someone else's clothes that don't quite fit her. It's not Oscar ceremony material, but I'd love to see her in a big camel's hair sweater from my fall line with a big turtleneck."

Mira Sorvino? "She could wear anything, but I'd love to see her in something discreet, like this navy blue dress with a drawstring at the hip and flat shoes that Linda Evangelista wore in the recent show."

Drew Barrymore? "She's fantastic, and, although I don't know why, I always see her in white terry cloth robes, like Marilyn Monroe coming out of the bathtub, looking out the window and throwing kisses to the crowd outside her hotel room."

Marisa Tomei? "Mmm. Well, she lives in my building on 12th Street."

Julia Ormond? "I went on a verbal slur campaign with Sabrina -- just because I didn't do the clothes, I'm sort of, like, furious about that movie." Really? "Somebody from the Sabrina production called and said, 'What if you were to do the clothes?' When I asked who the girl was. they said Julia Ormond, but I said, 'Why don't you find someone like a just-discovered Sade? That would make it really fascinating, where they'd be creating a whole new thing.' Well, ahem, I didn't do the movie."

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