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When Chanel Inc. withdrew as the backer of Isaac Mizrahi's ready- to-wear line in October 1998, it seemed like an apocalypse for a generation of fashion designers. A plucky downtowner with an outsize personality, and the son of a New York garment wholesaler, Mr. Mizrahi, 39, was part of a cadre of designers attempting to translate lower Manhattan street style for the Madison Avenue lady. He was a creature of 1990's marketing whose name became a household word with the 1995 documentary, Unzipped. Then he lost his patron, and a month later his comrade, Todd Oldham, announced that he, too, was closing up shop.
Mr. Mizrahi is still reeling from those bad times. He's pursuing a year-old $30 million lawsuit against Chanel and its subsidiary, American Fragrances Inc. (he charges breach of contract and wants the rights to his name back), and he has publicly licked his wounds in an autobiographical off-Broadway one-man show and cabaret act, LES MIZrahi.
But for the last two years, Mr. Mizrahi, an invention of the fashion world, has been doggedly trying to reinvent himself. This fall, his talk show will debut on the Oxygen TV network. And, with architect H. Thomas O'Hara, who has collaborated with Robert A.M. Stern, Mr. Mizrahi is helping to design "superluxury" pieds-a-terres on West 42nd Street, just down the street from Bryant Park, where he used to romp on the runway.
"I don't know why, but this project just really appeals to me, because I can do it and say to the world that I did it on my own," said Mr. Mizrahi on Aug. 2. "My show on Oxygen is just another example of doing exactly what I please. That's the only way I can live my life is to do exactly as I please. And opportunities arise and I have to take them."
But Isaac Mizrahi, Act II, causes him a certain...