Editor’s Note: This year’s Forces of Fashion is focused on fashion runways, a subject of endless fascination that has been considered in print, exhibitions, and of course, film. The ur-documentary on the subject is undoubtedly Unzipped, which chronicles the lead-up to and aftermath of Isaac Mizrahi’s fall 1994 collection. Filmed 30 years ago and released in 1995, the days of VHS, the movie stands the test of time. Here, an updated and expanded version of this oral history, first published in 2020.
“Good news is good news and bad news is good news when you make a documentary,” observes Douglas Keeve, who directed Unzipped, the iconic fashion film that was released 25 years ago today. “It’s just about discovery, you know. You have to be a journalist, but you have to be innocent too. And try not to steer it, just try to capture it.”
Life might sometimes be stranger than fiction, but all storytellers—be they fantasists or documentarians—need some kind of action to propel their narratives forward.
The grain of sand around which Keeve forms his rare pearl of a movie is the negative fashion review designer Isaac Mizrahi, the film’s extrovert subject, received for his spring 1994 ready-to-wear collection. What follows is an examination of the largely associative and intuitive process by which the designer is driven to create a fall lineup that will bring the critics back around to his side.
The transitory nature of fashion makes it a tricky subject for a film, because it dates easily. Unzipped, which was well-received when it was first released, has stood the test of time. The film is ostensibly a story about the making of a collection, a subject that has been taken up by many a filmmaker since, but Keeve’s film is ultimately bigger than fashion, and that’s what has given it legs. In essence, Unzipped is an intimate and loving look at Mizrahi (who was dating Keeve at the time the movie was made), and a record of the process of creation, which is an intangible mixture of magic and madness. As an independent designer, Mizrahi is David to the industry’s Goliath. Caught in the endless cycle of seasons, he’s also like Sisyphus, pushing to the top of the hill. The goal is a fashion show—“the most wonderful 20 minutes of a designer’s life,” as Mizrahi puts it—and then it’s right back to the drawing board.