Photo illustration by Joelle McKenna
Isaac Mizrahi: a cabaret singer with a fashion habit
'If you’re from New York, you’re kind of born with a night club act in you if you dig deep enough,' he says of his Café Carlyle show, which will stream his last performance on March 19
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Isaac Mizrahi is a lot of things. He is the designer who burst onto the fashion scene with his 1988 runway debut, a prodigy who the New York Times would call “the hottest new designer.” He’s a Project Runway judge and outspoken TV personality. He has dressed supermodels in elite attire and released affordable lines with Target and QVC.
But this is also someone who’s first sewing machine creations were puppets, so he could put on a show at home.
“I’ve always performed. I’ve always done night club acts,” he tells Brooklyn Magazine. “If you’re from New York, you’re kind of born with a night club act in you if you dig deep enough.”
This was also someone went to the LaGuardia High School of Performing arts with a yen to sing and perform. Going into fashion—his father was in the clothing business—was in some respects a more realistic and reliable way to get a job—and get out of Brooklyn. Turns out it kinda worked for him.
“I went into show business in high school, but then I switched careers at the end of high school because I was too afraid that I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to get out of the house. That was my number one priority,” says Mizrahi, who is this week’s guest on “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast.” “I switched horses and I became a fashion designer because I just knew it would be easier to get a job in a fashion context.”
And although Mizrahi left Brooklyn and never looked back, you can take the boy out of East Flatbush, but he still has to come back to visit mom from time to time. When he’s not doing that or launching new lines, Mizrahi is about to close out his annual run performing cabaret at the Café Carlyle.
Every year he puts on a splashy, campy fun show with a live band from the iconic Manhattan room. This year, his set was taken virtual for obvious reasons, changing the dynamic of the show. On this run, audiences have been treated to a more intimate-feeling, and in some ways more candid off-the-cuff, performance. Mizrahi’s guests from his current Carlyle run have included Suzanne Vega, Jackie Hoffman and “Orange is the New Black’s” Lea DeLaria. The March 19 show, his final, will feature guest Justin Vivian Bond and will be streamed at the BroadwayWorld Events pay-per-view streaming platform.
Mizhrahi joins the podcast today to discuss the show and just about everything else.
We discuss growing up gay in observant Sephardic Jewish Flatbush. “I was in the most crazy wrong situation. I was like an alien,” he says. ”I was this very creative very flamboyant kid, being raised in this kind of orthodox Yeshiva.”
We get into his career in fashion (“the mainstay of my style is this idea of being surprising and humorous and colorful”) and the idea of cancel culture—and himself being called out for a certain Golden Globes interaction with Scarlett Johansson. “I regret that to this day,” he says of touching her inappropriately on the red carpet to suss out her undergarment situation. “I apologized for that and even in the moment I knew I was making a mistake.”
We also discuss which aspects of Covid life with outlast the pandemic. Plus, at the end, he takes a pop quiz on cabaret history. Check it out here or wherever you get your podcasts.
