Pleasing Explores Sexual Wellness

More than 30 years after the film was first released, Unzipped is returning to theaters in a newly restored 4K version at Tribeca’s Film Forum this week. Following Friday’s first screening, writer, director, actor, activist, and lifelong Mizrahi fan Dunham moderated a conversation with the man of the hour, alongside director Douglas Keeve and executive producer and former brand partner Nina Santisi. Dunham, who recalled the thrill of attending Mizrahi’s fashion shows with her mother throughout the ’90s, dressed for the occasion in a vintage 1994 Mizrahi piece sourced from Vestiaire Collective, matching Mizrahi’s quick wit and charisma as the two bantered their way through the conversation. She recalled Unzipped as the first documentary she had ever seen, one that propelled her hunger for more and whose freshness continues to inspire her today. “It was a new idea to let fashion be funny,” she said. “Fashion was so deathly serious.”

Beginning with Mizrahi reeling from a scathing review of his previous show, the black-and-white fever dream follows him through the fittings, sketches, strange flashes of inspiration, anxieties, and last-minute chaos behind his Fall 1994 collection. ’90s icons Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and a young Kate Moss float in and out, but it’s Mizrahi’s exuberant, completely unfiltered personality that carries the film. “You were a one-liner machine,” Dunham told him. “It’s like going to the greatest improv show I’ve ever seen.” He teases, dances, sings, and ricochets between panic and delight, foreshadowing a career that has since expanded across television, theater, and cabaret.

“Haven’t you ever seen a damn ballet before?” Mizrahi exclaims at one point, as those around him struggle to understand his idea of separating the runway from backstage with a translucent scrim. Capturing Mizrahi’s humor, instinctiveness, and spontaneity, the seemingly chaotic idea comes to life in the final runway show, with Keeve’s camera physically positioned on the runway to capture it. Behind the scrim, dressers scramble to dress models, who emerge on the other side with poise, polish, and levity. The ballet-inspired set reveals the chaos behind a fashion production while preserving the fantasy on the runway, a risk that ultimately became a highlight of the collection. And after spending most of its runtime in black-and-white, Unzipped suddenly bursts into color for the finale— which, as Dunham noted, captures the sheer joy of watching everything finally come together.

In retrospect, Mizrahi said one of his favorite parts of the documentary is how it captures a fashion industry before the teams of stylists and production companies that now surround major runway productions. He styled the collection himself, made his own dresser cards, and organized the shoe changes, while Santisi handled the scrim that allowed the audience to glimpse the shoe pass backstage. Today, Mizrahi said, fashion can feel “over-prepared.” “I think people like surprise,” he added. “And there’s no surprise anymore in fashion.”

As the panel wrapped, Dunham asked what they hoped would resonate most with viewers today. She herself shared that Unzipped still inspires her to make things, reminding that good art should always make her a little jealous. Mizrahi, with a laugh, exclaimed, “Tell all your straight friends to come and be gay!”