As his gossipy time capsule of the 90s fashion industry at its peak turns 30, director Douglas Keeve reflects on fashion then – and now
Naomi Campbell once had a navel ring. Now this is not strictly information any of us should know. This is, after all, Naomi Campbell. We don’t talk about these things. Campbell, the premier Black British supermodel of all time, has constructed an image more tightly managed than Fort Knox. And yet there she was in Douglas Keeve’s documentary, Unzipped, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, debating Isaac Mizrahi about whether or not to remove her navel piercing. “I can’t, it closes up again in an hour!” Campbell explains. “I’d have to get it redone again. As soon as air gets to it, it starts to…” She uses her hand to mime the hole closing up, much to Mizrahi’s mock disgust. It’s not exactly an All the President’s Men-sized scoop but for the untouchable Campbell and her peers, it might as well be.
This is the fleeting beauty of Unzipped, a lively, gossipy time capsule of the 90s fashion industry at its peak. Isaac Mizrahi is the film’s protagonist and vivacious emcee, shepherding models, friends and adherents through preparations for his fall 1994 collection. It’s a smorgasbord of strange and intimate vignettes featuring legendary cultural figures. There’s Eartha Kitt reclining on a sofa and flamboyantly demanding Mizrahi craft a gown for her, occasionally spasming and jerking Eartha Kitt-ly. During fashion week, Mizrahi, André Leon Talley and John Galliano engage in a late-night tarot reading. In Mizrahi’s atelier, Kate Moss weighs up appearing in her underwear; Cindy Crawford jokes about the size of her pores.
Director Keeve was dating Mizrahi at the time, allowing for an intimacy and honesty that sets Unzipped apart from its stablemates. “Isaac’s a worldly guy, he’s a performer, he’s madcap, he’s unpredictable, and you just don’t find that every day,” Keeve reflects over Zoom 30 years after the film’s release. “You know, half the battle was won because of casting.” Indeed, Mizrahi’s breadth of references for his collection is one of Unzipped’s most enjoyable throughlines, the designer energetically zigzagging between the likes of Nanook of the North, Call of the Wild, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Red Shoes.
There’s a moment on an episode of Late Night with David Letterman that has done the rounds on TikTok; Sandra Bernhard, featured in Unzipped as one of Mizrahi’s Capote’s Swan-like muses, describes her outfit with rat-a-tat ballroom umpire flair: “We are giving Mizrahi tonight, we are giving Oribe on hair, we are giving Helena on makeup! We are giving high glamour ... and the audience loves it!” It’s a snippet on a chatshow that serves as a microcosm for a wider moment in fashion and pop culture. Mizrahi, the man and designer, was synonymous with 90s fashion, practically to a fault; he struggled to achieve the same industry notoriety after the turn of the millennium. Mizrahi was shrewd, catty and charismatic – a personality preordained for stints on Broadway, on Project Runway, on RuPaul’s Drag Race. But in his heyday, Mizrahi was a magnet for a certain type of fashion nobility and it is our extraordinary luck that he allowed himself and his inner circle to be heavily documented.
Today, Unzipped is a melancholic watch because of the limitless access. It’s a utopian world inexplicably devoid of PRs, contracts and power struggles: where Keeve’s camera is able to probe any area, Mizrahi can demand whatever he wants of his models, and none of it would fly in 2025. “It was capturing lightning in a bottle because we had all the models who were on their way up or at the top,” Keeve says. “I’m not the expert on this but people say [1994] was the year of the supermodel and I don’t know if you would have that today.”
Keeve does believe Unzipped could be made today, it would just require a talent and personality of Mizrahi-like proportions. “Making a documentary is a very fragile process and the more controlling people are, the worse they look,” he says. “People who give you a lot of free rein come off really well. The fact that everything is so different now, it’s more difficult. A lot of films that come out now about fashion and about designers reflect that; you don’t have that sense of freedom and ease.”
Even the proximity and comfort with models would be tough to achieve. “When Isaac says, ‘every time Naomi comes in, it’s a different engagement ring’, you wouldn’t joke with her that way [now],” Keeve says. “I don’t think people have that permission or intimacy to do that these days. There’s so much more at stake.” He mentions various fashion controversies; the Balenciaga teddy bear scandal, for one: “In the old days, nobody would have picked up on that, but if one person sees it now, it blows up.” Still, Keeve is optimistic that an Unzipped-style documentary could be made: “You have to dig a little harder to find the gold.” It’s a matter of showmanship but also a deep passion and intellect for the field.
Keeve is now working on a documentary about the late Vogue editor and style doyenne Polly Mellen; he followed her for four years after she was featured in Unzipped. It’s figures like Mellen that would be ideal subjects for a modern Unzipped but that kind of character, with fashion knowledge and insight and tack-sharp wit woven into their DNA, is increasingly hard to find. “It’s funny,” Keeve recalls. “Tom Ford is in my movie talking about André and Polly. He was saying how after his shows, André would send him this huge list talking about his references, as if he knew exactly what was on the moodboard, down to the most subtle references. You couldn’t fool these people who had such depth.”
Another Unzipped might be possible, might approach the heady highs of what Keeve and Mizrahi achieved, but the spontaneity and liberty of the 90s feels long dead. It’s not necessarily about waving your cane and pining for yesteryear; it’s more about mourning an era enabled by seemingly unlimited access and artistic opportunity. Mizrahi couldn’t define the ‘Mizrahi look’ in a similar way to his peers but Unzipped is arguably his defining achievement. He volunteered himself to unpack the precise mechanics of the 90s fashion bubble and gave us an invaluable monument to what was gained and what’s been lost.
