美国国家公共电台 NPR Isaac Mizrahi: From Following Mom Into The Fitting Room, To Fashion Fame（在线收听）

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Isaac Mizrahi says that as he grew up in a Syrian, Jewish Orthodox family in Brooklyn, he often felt like a chubby, gay thumb. Today, of course, he's a fashion designer and celebrity, familiar from QVC and "Project Runway All Stars." He's written a memoir that details not only his rise to prominence but rising above some of the shame he was made to feel as a child, the losses of so many fashion figures from the ravages of AIDS and struggles with his own anxieties, insomnia and depression. Isaac Mizrahi's memoir is "I.M." He joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

ISAAC MIZRAHI: Oh, hello.

SIMON: The book opens with a signature moment in your life, and you're 5 years old. You're at the Avenue U variety store in Brooklyn.

MIZRAHI: That's right.

SIMON: And what did you want more than anything else?

MIZRAHI: Well, I wanted a Barbie doll, but a Barbie doll was kind of like the exact thing that would label a kid in those days as someone who was a freak, you know. And as I think the book talks about, you know, it was kind of like this weird sort of social disease or something that didn't even have a name, you know. Like, they couldn't bring themselves to even think of the idea of being gay. So - yeah, so the Barbie doll was like this emblem of something, I think.

SIMON: And eventually your mother did get you a Barbie doll.

MIZRAHI: Yes, she allowed me. She kind of looked the other way. I really credit her with that.

SIMON: You did kind of grow up in the women's fitting room at Loehmann's, didn't you?

MIZRAHI: (Laughter) I did, actually. I was always accompanying her there, and I did get this crazy kind of sense of the psychology of the way women think about clothes. And so it was this crazy, crazy glimpse into that world of the way those women - it was this big communal dressing room and people grabbed each other's clothes and it was quite competitive. And yeah - and I noticed some pretty strong psychological ties between women's underclothes and their clothes and who they were.

SIMON: Tell us about the atelier you had in your basement. When you were a high school student, you were all just - you were really a professional designer, too.

MIZRAHI: Yeah, it's a crazy thing. I had this tiny collection with a friend of mine called Sara (ph). We made clothes and sold them to boutiques in New York City. And I had this small atelier in my basement where I made sketches, and sometimes I made first prototypes, and I did a lot of sewing down there. I mean, it all started with my fascination with puppets. I started making puppets when I was, like, I would say, like, 8 years old. I went with my mom to see the original production of "Follies," which is this fabulous Stephen Sondheim musical, and I was absolutely like just...

SIMON: (Singing) But I'm here.

MIZRAHI: Exactly. I mean, there I was, right? And it really affected me, and I did this big puppet revue in my garage, and it was called "Follies." And I learned to sew making puppets, you know. And the first things I ever - the first, like, real foray into anything creative was the puppet shows and also this crazy female impersonation that I used to do. I suddenly discovered Streisand. You know, here's this orthodox kid going to see "Funny Girl" when I'm 8 and just going mad thinking, well, she's Jewish and she's so glamorous. And it kind of saved me in this way, you know. And so I started to imitate her. I could do her voice great. I did Liza, I did Judy Garland. I did these female impersonations, again, at a time when it wasn't exactly, like, smiled upon for an 8 or a 10-year-old kid to do that.

SIMON: How hard was it to tell your mother who you were?

MIZRAHI: You know, I have to say it was very hard and she said, you know, you really should never tell your father. But it was a big relief to me because I'm not sure my father would have been able to - I really don't know if he would have been able to deal with this, you know.

SIMON: Your father, we'll explain, is gone now.

MIZRAHI: Yes, my father is gone. And that was one of the more difficult things writing about in the book, this idea that as much as I loved him - you know, he went when I was about 20 years old. And I had come out in a kind of half way, right? I was out to most of my friends and even my mom and my sisters. He didn't know, and I was sort of guarding the secret a little bit from him. And I just couldn't bring myself to tell him, you know, and then he passed. And the minute he passed I felt - kind of as much as I would miss him, as much as I loved him, I felt liberated. I could not have fulfilled my agenda as an adult at all, my creative agenda or my psychosexual agenda, if my father was with us. I would be guarding that still to this day.

SIMON: For a lot of Americans, we're going through very bad times.

MIZRAHI: Yes, we are.

SIMON: And I wonder how you feel about that, if some of the progress made...

MIZRAHI: I am an optimist and I think it's learned optimism. I think it's learned. I mean, when I was a kid, you could barely talk about certain things. And now not only do we talk about them, but we literally act on them. And I think that's progress, you know? And the thing is, like, my mom said the other day - she said this amazing thing. It was so inspiring. You know, she said, oh, all this stuff about old age - you know, she's 91. And she said losing your sight and losing your hearing and you can't walk and you have a walker and you can't eat anything, and she said, I recommend it, you know.

SIMON: (Laughter).

MIZRAHI: I recommend it. And I was like what - I mean, she's brilliant, obviously brilliant. She said as opposed to not seeing stuff, as opposed to not being here, it's fine. Like, I recommend all of those things. And it's - and you see where I get it. You see where I get this sort of learned optimism because there were moments that were very difficult for her in the past 10 years. I mean, she fell, and she had shoulder surgery, and she had her hip replaced, et cetera, et cetera. And she still recommends it, you know.

And so, like, as I get older, I learn more and more optimism. And I look at where this country is now and I look at us and the political situation and I keep thinking it's really not about this moment. It's about the next moment and how we have that to look forward to, you know. And the progress that we've made, which is not - it's not a figment of our imagination. It might be in kind of genetic recess right now, but it's there, and it's definitely coming back.

You know, you can't tell me that all - that this generation, my generation who grew up, like, sort of watching "Sesame Street," OK, where everything was just integrated - right? - that's what we grew up with. War was wrong. Racism was wrong. OK. You cannot tell me that that is not going to prevail again in this country. It absolutely will.

SIMON: Isaac Mizrahi - his memoir, "I.M." - thanks so much for being with us.

MIZRAHI: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF RATATAT'S "CREAM ON CHROME")