Publisher's Weekly Review
Fashion designer Mizrahi reveals the many layers of his exceptional life in this witty, intelligent memoir. Mizrahi grew up in Brooklyn in a Syrian Jewish Orthodox family, and at an early age began designing Barbie doll wardrobes; at age 11, he opened his own atelier in his parents' basement. While attending LaGuardia High School for Performing Arts, Mizrahi began selling pieces of his first fashion collection to such tony boutiques as Manhattan's Charivari. After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Mizrahi worked with noted designers Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein, and rubbed elbows with fashion luminaries including Audrey Hepburn and Vogue's Anna Wintour. In luminous prose, Mizrahi chronicles not only the glamour-Liza Minnelli's wedding (she had four dress changes that "I hoped no one mistook any of them for mine") and nights at Studio 54-but also the low points of his life, such as his father's death and his own depression ("no matter how wonderful things are going, a lot of dark thinking manages to take hold"). Loving descriptions of vintage fabric charm, as do earnest moments, such as meeting his future husband, Arnold, in 2001 ("Aside from the great physical attraction, we were very honest with each other at all times"). This is a must-read for fashion fanatics. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The dynamic life of iconic fashion designer Mizrahi (b. 1961).Growing up in Brooklyn in a Syrian Jewish Orthodox family, where he stood out "like a chubby gay thumb," Mizrahi was considered artistic from an early age. Though his father worked in the clothing industry, their relationship was one of mutual indifference. The author was more fascinated with his mother, Sarah, and they bonded over long conversations on style and culture. In his late teens, he came out to her, which strained their relationship, yet the disclosure would become just one of many defining moments in the author's life. With an amiable, conversational flow, Mizrahi shares anecdotes ranging from childhood public shaming, which heightened his self-awareness, to breakthrough moments when his appreciation of sartorial elegance became a calling that would escort him from Parsons School of Design to stints with Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein. Nights out at Studio 54 and designing for Liza Minnelli led to more hobnobbing with celebrities. Embedded into the memoir's chronological narrative are pages of opinion and critique on the fashion world and how Mizrahi's career choice has influenced the rest of his life. He writes frankly about necessity, sacrifice, and the struggle between his personal life and his desire to wholly immerse himself in the fashion industry: "the harder we worked and the more devoted we were to fashion, the further we all seemed to get from our own sex livesand the more we used fashion as a diversion from deeper, more meaningful things." He also contributes thoughts on darker times: his father's death, mourning the devastating number of "fashion glitterati" lost to AIDS, and his battles with chronic insomnia, anxiety, and depression. His unpredictable courtship of his husband, Arnold, reads like a Hollywood love story. The key to the warmth and overall success of the memoir is Mizrahi's unapologetic, bare-all approach as he shares the best and worst aspects of his life, all of which helped mold him into the fashion powerhouse he has become today.A charming and witty memoir; required reading for fashion aficionados. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The bad news? Readers who recognize iconic fashion designer Mizrahi only from Project Runway: All Stars may be initially disappointed: the show's never mentioned. The good? Everything else about Mizrahi's honest, insightful, and thoroughly entertaining first memoir. Mizrahi comes off in writing just like his onscreen persona: warm, witty, humble and ready to dish. Celebrity names are scattered throughout the book, but never just to impress. Whether Mizrahi mentions them in brief encounters or long-lasting friendships, just about everyone's shown in a positive light. Mizrahi devotes most attention to his mom, Sarah: his steadfast soul mate, inspiration, and supporter. Mizrahi chronicles the stages of his life as an ungainly youngster growing up in his uberconservative Syrian Jewish community, a closeted student at New York's High School for the Performing Arts, a gifted newcomer maneuvering through the layers of the fashion industry, a jet-setting superstar, and then, abruptly, yesterday's news through his current career as a performer and producer. He shares his never-ending anxieties, indecision, and bouts of depression in introspective passages, as well as the ups and downs of his personal life, including the on-again, off-again courtship of his now husband, Arnold. This is likely to get a lot of celebrity buzz; expect enthusiastic demand.--Kathleen McBroom Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
GINGERBREAD, by Helen Oyeyemi. (Riverhead, $27.) For her new novel - a meditation on family and what it means to be part of a community - Oyeyemi has taken old fairy tales, seasoned them with 20th-century history and pop-culture references, and frosted them with whimsical detail. I.M.: A Memoir, by Isaac Mizrahi. (Flatiron, $28.99.) Throughout this autobiography by one of America's most acclaimed designers of the 1990s, his innovation and confidence are evident, contrasting with an industry that, despite its superficial fickleness, can be deeply resistant to change. TRUTH IN OUR TIMES: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts, by David E. McCraw. (All Points, $28.99.) McCraw, the deputy general counsel of The Times, leads readers through some of his most memorable cases, particularly those involving Donald Trump. He expresses concern about the crisis of public trust, stating that "the law can do only so much." MADAME FOURCADE'S SECRET WAR: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler, by Lynne Olson. (Random House, $30.) Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who fought the Nazis while enduring sexism in her ranks, is little remembered today. Olson argues that she should be celebrated. INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL: Stories, by David Means. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Means's fifth collection, populated with adulterers and criminals, railroad bums and other castaways, suggests that beneath every act of violence there pulses a vein of grace. GOOD WILL COME FROM THE SEA, by Christos Ikonomou. Translated by Karen Emmerich. (Archipelago, paper, $18.) This collection of linked stories, set on an unnamed Aegean island and featuring a cast of wry, rough-talking Greeks reeling from the country's economic devastation, showcases Ikonomou's wit, compassion and infallible ear for the demotic. OUTSIDERS: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World, by Lyndall Gordon. (Johns Hopkins University, $29.95.) Gordon links five visionaries who made literary history - George Eliot, Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf - through their shared understanding of death and violence. THE TWICE-BORN: Life and Death on the Ganges, by Aatish Taseer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Attempting to rediscover his traditional Indian roots through the study of Sanskrit, a journalist finds himself alienated from them. HOUSE OF STONE, by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. (Norton, $26.95.) This ambitious and ingenious first novel uses a young man's search for his personal ancestry as a way of unearthing hidden aspects of Zimbabwe's violent past. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books