Isaac Mizrahi is disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald's bitter maxim about American lives lacking second acts. In today's Wall Street Street Journal, Teri Agins reports on the successful attempt by the semi-washed-up '90s fashion icon to reinvent himself as a style maven for the masses through his partnership with Target, doing for clothes what Michael Graves did for housewares (Warning: Stupid Flash Intro).
Mizrahi's high-end fashion house attracted a lot of media attention through the '90s but was a financial flop, according to Agins, with sales never topping $10 million and zero--that's right, ZERO--profits. After Chanel, which owned the business, pulled the plug in '98, Mizrahi putzed around, er, went through a "period of artistic experimentation," before Target came calling in 2002. Over the past three years, Mizrahi and Target have been a huge success together--a single "wool toggle coat with a pink quilted lining" grossed almost $1 million, nearly 10% of Mizrahi's entire line back in the (supposedly) high-flying '90s. (Ironically, the photo above links to a 2002 story in PAPER that mockingly suggests Target retain Mizrahi to design cubical moth balls. Heh--but who's laughing now?)
What's fascinating to me about Agins' piece (subscription only, so no link-love) is the conflicted relationship between the unprofitable world of high fashion and the increasingly lucrative world of fashion-for-the-masses (a tension Agins keenly calls attention to.)
Mizrahi was consistently discouraged from doing the Target deal. "Some critics warned that designing clothes for Target could tarnish his image," Akins writes, and "some in haute fashion circles have criticized his commercial turn."
To his credit, Mizrahi's sensibilities aren't so delicate. Akins describes him as "sanguine about his creative efforts, considering himself both an artist and an entrepreneur. 'Target has an image--a humor and a freedom that is more cutting-edge than anywhere,' [Mizrahi] says enthusiastically. 'You're not selling out, you're reaching out.'"
The fashionistas turning up their nose at Mizrahi's embrace of capitalism are fighting a losing battle. I'm not saying that there's no value to high-end designer wear that only the super-wealthy can afford. But today people--ordinary, everyday, shop-at-Target people--are demanding that the objects that fill the world around them be stylish, well-designed, and affordable. More power to Mizrahi and Target for democratizing good design.
