First published 2019
Isaac Mizrahi opens his life to readers after decades of keeping his personal story hidden despite his public fame as a designer, performer, and television personality. Born into a sheltered Syrian Jewish Orthodox family, he navigated his identity as a gay man while building relationships with cultural icons like Richard Avedon, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Wintour, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Meryl Streep, and Oprah Winfrey. Mizrahi chronicles his rise to prominence in the late 1980s fashion world and his expansion into cabaret and television. He confronts his ongoing struggles with weight, sleeplessness, and depression while recounting what it meant to live openly gay during a hostile era and watch the AIDS epidemic devastate his community. The memoir balances glamorous celebrity encounters with honest examination of the challenges beneath his public success, offering readers both entertaining industry stories and genuine emotional insight into a complex creative life.
Genres: autobiography, biography-memoir, fashion-designers, gay, gay-fiction, fashion, jewish, fashion-design
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, identity-exploration
Period: Late 1980s
384 pages · Hardcover · Flatiron Books
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness