Isaac Mizrahi on This Week's The Fashion Show: 'She Wasn't Too Trashy, Yet Just Trashy Enough.'
Speaking of Cesar, I'm worried for him! I'm actually worried that I'm this worried for him.
I know! I get it! I get it, I get it, I get it. I love that you get to see what we go through as judges. It's not easy as a judge to sit there and say, "Hey, Cesar, why are you so failing so much? You're so good at what you do, and you're failing. Get with it! Pick it up!" You know?
I mean, the bottom of that dress? I didn't think that kind of tackiness was in his vocabulary.
No, and I have to say, you didn't get what it actually felt like in person. In person it was way worse. It was a tattered polyester. I mean, no one loves white cotton under evening clothes like I do. I used to do always do that, like white cotton under velvet or something genius like that. Or a petticoat with cotton trim, I love it. So Scarlett O'Hara, so southern. But I'm sorry, this was a poly-cotton pillow case that was frayed. It was so terrible, terrible, terrible.
Speaking of costume drama, what the hell happened with Dominique's dress for Jacqueline? I couldn't figure out how exactly it was dated. Agnes Moorehead, maybe? Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca? Aunt Augusta in The Importance of Being Earnest?
[Laughs.] I know! I know. She's lucky she was on the winning team, I'll say. That was our least favorite dress. Uh-huh.
That hair with that neckline? So old.
I know! And Jacqueline, she's such a good-looking woman. She's busty, and you've got to work that. These kids, I keep saying to them, "You know what? It's that simple. When you look at that woman, you know what's going to make her look good. Right? So why are you over-thinking it? You know how to solve this problem. Now solve it." Every week it's the same thing! They seem to ask, "Is it that simple? I have to complicate it and show them I'm working." No, no, no. The way you'll show us you're great is if you grasp that it's about these simple little principles. Simple principles! If you have any extra time, then over-think it.
Despite David's multiple drafts, his dress for Caroline Manzo turned out well. How do you think he pulled it off?
What's funny is we weren't privy to the drama backstage, and how the dress once flirted with Jolly Green Giant [territory]. When it came out, I was like, "Hooray! That's one dress over another dress! How funny! How mysterious!" We didn't know it was a disaster that he saved by being really clever. Maybe it was one of Calvin's ideas? "This isn't working. You better fix this fast."
Calvin somehow made the most garish dress. That teal thing for Teresa?
And yet it was the most resolved too in the way it worked with Teresa's body. It was polished and resolved. Yes, it was the most vulgar and garish, and the color was simply unforgivable to me. I hate that color. That color looks like the worst part of the '80s. But in fact, it made a big impact on the runway. The way they showed was really something kind of special -- the cute models, how they approached it like a Vanity Fair portrait shoot.
Lastly, you guys seemed to love Cyndi's dress. I don't quite know. Seemed tight and satiny in some places and more fabulous in others, to me.
I'll tell you, the reason Cyndi almost won -- and she'd have won if she weren't in the losing house -- I think the reason I liked that dress the best was because there was a sexiness and a drama to it. You could fault the craftsmanship and some of the fabrication, but for the most part, that girl walked down that runway looking beautiful. She wasn't too trashy, yet just trashy enough. It looked like it really belonged on her body. You didn't wish she had some skinny model wearing it. Teresa's dress looked really trashy for instance -- you know, because she had actual anatomy.
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