Now that Lifetime's Project Runway is over, Bravo's reclaiming its fashionista flair with the stellar The Fashion Show: Ultimate Collection. Legendary fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi sits on a distinguished and fearsome judging panel on the design competition series, bandying opinions with no-nonsense supermodel Iman and the shrewd Laura Brown. He even mentors the competing designers at the top of each episode. Now, Movieline will catch up with Mizrahi each week about what we don't get to hear on The Fashion Show -- his full arguments for and against the fashions that end up walking the runway. Join us as the enlightening Mizrahi talks about House of Nami's "creepy" collection and Emerald Syx's "crowd-pleasing" melange.
House of Nami beat House of Emerald Syx soundly. In the end, did their color story help secure them the win?
In the end, I think that's what I think made the collection look great on the runway. That's such a big part of design -- palette. If you get the whole thing right, it's just sets the whole thing in motion. I think color equals emotional tone, you know what I mean? At least for me, if you get the color right, then you can start envisioning what the collection is going to look like. I know those guys went to that exhibit and absorbed that idea of these kind of fleshy, ecru-ish, kind of putty-ish tones. And those layers that were kind of pink and red on top? Somehow they digested it properly and they brought it out in the right way. I thought that in the case of House of Emerald Syx, they fell back on this crowd-pleasing idea of red. In the end, the only cohesive thing about that collection was that everything sort of red.
The pale colors were definitely a wittier play on the human sinew element.
Absolutely. In a way, it's funny that it was darker to go that way. It was creepier, you know what I mean?
Yeah, almost morbid.
It was almost morbid, exactly. It's funny, you notice at the beginning of the show, I go, "Don't be afraid of the darker context of this challenge. Don't be afraid of it."
Let's talk about reversible clothes. Are they salable? Are they a real part of the fashion industry?
It's not really. No, I have to say. It's really kind of niche, but I always think it's kind of interesting. The reason we thought of that -- I mean the collective "we," as in the producers, Laura Brown, Iman, all of us -- we thought of it because it's kind of not around. It's a surprise to everyone. I think I would never ask a girl now to reverse something on the runway, but that means that it's coming! If it's the last thing you think about, it's probably coming. It was this fun kind of idea we had. I have to say, even Eduardo, who won -- no one got the reversible thing because none of the looks changed that drastically. The one who I think got it best was Calvin. Definitely not the knapsack part, but that skirt that turned into a kind of cape dress. I thought that was really a fabulous transformation. It wasn't really reversible, but it was a transformation. I mean, when I go "reversible," I want something to be, I don't know -- a raincoat on one side and fur on the other side, you know? Plaid on one side and Day-Glo on the other. I want something to completely transform. None of them really got that, frankly.
The judges agreed to give Eduardo the win quite quickly.
Yeah. One thing I thought was great about Eduardo's look was, in a way, he kind of went outside his safety zone for that look. I wouldn't have known that by episode two, but I'd have known it by episode four or five. That said, I think what secured him the win was the invention of it. To me, it did look like something I'd never seen before. Just the elements together; the crazy collar looked new to me. That was hearkening back to the way muscles wrap around a bone, you know? It really was very easy to see how the inspiration manifested itself, you know what I mean? More than that, I thought it was a super-looking dress. I would love to wear that dress! I loved the idea of the skirt reversing and making it slightly dressier or slighty less dressy. In general, it was so damn good-looking. Sometimes that's the luck of the draw, the psychology of where it falls in a fashion show. Like you watch and go, "Ooh! Ooh. OH!" Like, the third thing out sometimes really goes well. Or the first thing that goes out really goes well. Every show is different, the way you present it. That dress made the most visual impact, however you want to interpret that. That's always what fashion is about. It starts with a great idea, a visceral response to something -- such an inside-the-body quality -- but in the end, it's what's outside the body that counts. It's what it looks like, you know?
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]