Isaac Mizrahi Breaks Down The Fashion Show with Movieline: 'It was Almost Morbid'

Mike removed himself from the competition, but the dress his teammates made in his absence proved they did not need him there. Their vision seemed to supersede his.

Totally. Totally. In the end, it was about the energy of Mike bringing it all down. I thought that Mike was a very good designer, but just not very good at this 24-hour challenge thing. In this case, it's like a game show or something. You have to come up with something in 24 hours. A lot of times, it's the luck of the luck of the luck. It's not your skill or who you are as a person or your concentration level; it's what this fabric will do. Oftentimes I start something and six months later I get something out of it, do you know what I mean? I always said that to every single one of those people who went home week-to-week. "Maybe you're not so great at design competition shows, but you are great at design. You're a great designer." Every one of them is great.

Reality-competition series definitely reward a certain type of internal motor in their contestants.

Absolutely. I think that's true for Top Chef and any of those competition shows that has to do with a skill.

House of Emerald Syx had some good moments on the runway. Which of their dresses were standouts to your eyes?

I loved Jeffrey's dress. I thought it was really beautiful. It showed us who he really is too. When you see him week to week, you'll see that's something he does really well. It's a kind of -- it's not just a dress. In the end, it speaks to a woman. It is a woman, that dress. I think those are the great designers. Somebody like Cesar, someone like Eduardo, someone like Jeffrey, even to an extent Calvin. They're not just doing cute dresses or pretty dresses. They're doing women. You get a sense of a woman when you see one little dress or one little pantsuit or one little top with a pair of trousers. You get a sense of who the woman is. I loved Jeffrey's dress because it was a mysterious, coy sexuality. This idea of a girl with the sleeves too long, that longer cocktail length, and the shoulders peeking out. I just liked it. The color was excellent, the texture was excellent, and then he did this crazy thing with those pleats around the ribcage. I thought it was really clever.

What I liked about Jeffrey's was it took the hackneyed idea of an old-school Hollywood vamp and made it un-costumey. It was modern, not cliched, you know?

Yes! And modern being the operative word. Modern, modern, modern.

The longer dresses in Emerald's collection blended together for me. Did those cement the collection as one-note?

Fashion designers nowadays, they don't really go, "Oh, short is over. Long is over. It's better to be short or long or whatever." You don't really do that anymore because that just isn't true in the marketplace or real life. You go to a cocktail party and you see every length under the sun, and if it looks right, it looks right. We all know when it looks wrong. But sometime when we were shooting the first episode, we were like, "Oh, it looks wrong to be so short. What were you guys thinking? We're going into a 'longer' phase." I guess that sunk in from week one to two. To me [the longer lengths] did look fresher. But you'll notice that Eduardo won because his cocktail length was a little longer, just to the knee. The week before his dress looked short, but it didn't look as fresh to my eye at that point if he'd just gone a little bit longer.

[Photos via BravoTV.com]

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