I.M. Read online

  From the time I was extremely young I had an ability to see almost everything in a store with one glance. I can go to a flea market and tell you in thirty seconds whether it’s worth staying. Not so at Jerry Brown. You could look for hours and always find something fresh. That day with Sarah, as I was looking through the venerable cases, a shade of mauve caught my eye. The color of dead roses, the fabric had a kind of textureless face, with an exquisite dull sheen like a common silk lawn, only with the mystique and movement of a heavy crepe. It was rich and light, something I had never seen before. So plain and so expensive. I knew the fabric would be perfect for the design I had in mind. Then the salesperson called it “peau d’ange”—angel skin—which made me love it more.

  Sarah got a recommendation for someone who wanted extra work as a patternmaker and dressmaker, a Filipino lady named Lupe. A week later we went to visit her in her small one-bedroom garden apartment on the Upper West Side. This was before that area underwent its big gentrification, and she forsook a living room in favor of a small workroom with mannequins, a cutting table, three sewing machines, and an ironing station. She spoke little English, but that never stood in the way of our work, and she was the first in a long line of people I would have to communicate with without a common language between us. As anyone in the fashion business can vouch for, sewing rooms all over the world tend to be real melting pots of languages, and yet there are rarely any communication problems. We speak “the language of the pins,” as I call it. Rather than talk, we show each other. It’s something I applied from dance-class methods. In sewing rooms and dance classes, reading and speaking are not nearly as productive as demonstration.

  The dress—a simple sack design with drawstring shoulders and a sash—made “a big hit” when Sarah wore it. A plunging V revealed her back, one of her most beautiful assets that you wouldn’t have known about. I went to her house to help her dress that night, and when we were finished she looked truly beautiful. The dress was just below the knee, and not a spangle in sight. Just that mauve against Sarah’s beautiful young body. It had a kind of sex appeal that was closer to ancient Greece than to the standard disco-era schmaltz. I convinced her to keep her hair and makeup simple that night, and she looked young and sophisticated. Someone named Cookie Cohen, the wife of Joe Cohen, who owned and ran the fabulous M&J Trimmings (one of the greatest trimming resources in the world), was a big fan of Sarah’s dress and asked if I would make her a gown for her son’s bar mitzvah. This was a big compliment, seeing as how Cookie had ins with all the fashion houses on Seventh Avenue and could easily have gotten a dress from anywhere. A bar mitzvah dress was a huge opportunity, and I understood the implications of that commission. I left the salesmanship to Sarah and took on the mantle of designer. I always left business to the people who seemed to know what they were doing, and in the case of Sarah at that time, if there was anything she knew about, it was how to influence other Syrian women and their clothing choices. If this went well it could solidify a business for Sarah and me. If Cookie’s dress was a “hit,” Sarah and I would be on our way, whichever way—still unclear.

  For Cookie’s dress I selected a brown and gold lamé floral damask fabric and combined it with lilac and pink chiffon. It was a fishtail-shaped gown built on one shoulder and it had a multitier handkerchief hem and a train. The dress looked great on Cookie, and within weeks after that bar mitzvah I was approached to make clothes for a number of Syrian women. Without knowing exactly what was happening Sarah and I were forming a little business. I was the designer and she was the business liaison. Before the end of my third year at PA, Sarah and I created a label for our venture called IS New York. “I” for Isaac and “S” for Sarah. We split the bill because she took financial responsibility for the company, but I couldn’t help wondering why I accepted the fifty-fifty deal. I thought there should’ve been some major distinction for being the actual designer but I was too polite and conflict-averse to raise it as an issue. Mostly I was scared to lose her patronage if I asked for what seemed rightfully mine. Another instance of a familiar irony; what drove me to make money was my determination to get away from the community—and yet here I was using a community connection as backing. I adored Sarah, but it’s something that to this day I wish I could go back in time and correct. If only I’d waited to see what the wide world would bring me—the world outside of the community.

  Ricky Haddad, Sarah’s husband, was a partner in Haddad Brothers, a big family firm that made childrenswear and is still in business. Haddad Brothers had a factory on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn with a big cutting facility, and another larger factory in Ossining, New York. Ricky agreed to let us use those factories for a nominal fee in their off seasons. In the actual world this makes no sense at all because factories that specialize in childrenswear don’t know the first thing about making women’s clothes, and vice versa. We learned a lot about those things those first few months, but aside from a few horrible setbacks—a whole range of appliqué blouses that had to be recut and remade—for the most part, it worked.

  I set to the task of designing a tiny first collection, which began with the sourcing of fabrics—two of which I remember as though they were hanging on a rack in front of me now. One was a crimson sequined georgette from Sequins International. With that I made a round-yoked top with a revere collar and leg-o’-mutton sleeves tucked into a matching high-waisted, floor-length, side-slit skirt with a red satin sash. Then I did something very audacious for a fifteen-year-old: I made an appointment with a fabric company I had seen an ad for in Vogue, an Italian firm called Cugnasca that made gorgeous silks and prints. I went up to their New York office with Sarah, looked through the racks, and picked out a pale celadon-green crepe printed with what looked like multicolored graffiti tags. I ordered a “piece” (fifty yards) and designed a very simple tank top in the print with a pair of matching pegged pants.

  When the first samples were made I invited some of the girls in my high-school class to model the clothes at a shoot at Sarah’s house in Brooklyn. One of the girls had a boyfriend who was a budding photographer, and he agreed to take the pictures. At the time Henri Bendel was the greatest, most exclusive store in New York City, so once we had the portfolio, we attended one of their Thursday evening open calls for new labels. Sarah and I set up our things on a rack in the middle of the floor among the ten or twelve others who showed up. Finally the buyer appeared. She was a short, dark-haired woman in her midforties, with enormous round glasses, and dressed in black jersey. She never questioned my age—it was generally assumed I was in my early twenties because I was tall and overdressed. The buyer spared the time for Sarah to change into an outfit or two as she considered our tiny collection and our hopes were set high, but we were rejected after a week of intense waiting. We did land an order from another very glamourous store on the Upper West Side called Charivari. We took the clothes there one night just as the store was closing, and one of the owners—a guy with a big mustache, dressed in head-to-toe leather—gave us ten minutes to show him the line. He ordered three or four pieces, including a fabulous red silk taffeta blouse that was cut like something out of the nineteenth century with a high collar and pearls for buttons. We took our clothes to a number of small, exclusive clothing shops in New York City at the time and showed them to any buyer who would look.

  We traveled back and forth from McDonald Avenue to Ossining delivering fabrics, patterns, zippers, picking up samples, overseeing the cutting and sewing of different pieces. It was my first taste of the designer clothing business. All six pieces that we shipped to Charivari sold out quickly, and they reordered—a word which came to mean “success” in my vocabulary. Another shop that sold our clothes was called Lonia on East Fifty-fifth Street, down the block from the newly opened Manolo Blahnik. We expanded downtown to a store called Yuri Marchesi on the corner of Prince and Mercer. It was run by a devastatingly sexy guy (at least to an awkward teenager like me), the eponymous Yuri, who lived in a loft above the selling floor—
his disheveled bed was visible above the proceedings. He was tall and overly tan and had thinning dirty-blond hair and a Russian accent, and he wore seriously tight leather pants. (Leather pants were the go-to look for garmentos then). I suspect there were drugs around because the store was always filled with loud disco music, half-empty champagne flutes, and a retinue of jittery, talkative people who were in and out all day and night.

  It wasn’t spoken of, but my parents breathed a distinct sigh of relief when my female impersonations, my puppet obsession, all my dreams of show business seemed to be phasing out in favor of a business that could be understood by the family and the community at large. No doubt there were ugly, scary things about the garment business—sex scandals, drugs, etc.—but these were nowhere near as prevalent nor as public as in show business. In those days world-famous designers hid behind their brand names. My mother was thrilled by the idea that her son might actually go into the same business as Norman Norell and Geoffrey Beene. Instead of pressuring me, she inspired me. She talked only of clothes. She encouraged me to look at Vogue and Bazaar, which didn’t take much encouragement. At our Saturday-morning breakfasts, which continued well into my late teens, she would tell me things about the glamour of the fashion business and about her days as a young woman, when clothes were her biggest priority. She was so proud of her reputation in the community as a stylish dresser, and of her wily sartorial ways: buying inexpensive things and doctoring them up with trim, wearing clothes back-to-front to give necklines extra drama, wearing little boys’ clothes, and men’s silk pajamas to the beach. It was my mother’s dream I was fulfilling by becoming a fashion designer, even more than my own. Which isn’t to say that she dreamed of becoming a fashion designer herself—more, she wanted to be the mother of one.

  In my last year at PA my mother got the idea that my father should introduce me to an acquaintance who occupied the showroom next to his. Ellie Fishman designed a line of little girls’ dresses under the label Youngland, which was acknowledged as the leading childrenswear label of the time. She was an acclaimed designer responsible for bringing elements of high fashion to children’s clothes. The day we met she walked into my father’s showroom like a visiting religious dignitary and was received by his salespeople with a bowing reverence. She was a tiny lady in early middle age with a large majestic head and bluish chestnut-colored hair carefully arranged, so as not to look overly coiffed. She was understated and modern, dressed in a rust-and-white-striped blouse by Gil Aimbez, a blouse I had noticed in the window of Saks the week before. At first she had an icy mien and I felt ashamed to even suggest I might want to be in the same industry as her, someone so refined, with such exquisite taste. She sensed my unease and in barefaced New Yorkese said, “Don’t be nervous, I won’t bite!” Then she looked at my sketches. This wasn’t the fickle eye of my mother or the untrained eye of Sarah Haddad. This was the professional eye of someone who seemed adept at noticing good ideas and spotting talent.

  She won me right away with praise: “I’m glad I came over here,” she said to my father, “your son is very talented.” Then she gave me some harsh, necessary criticism. Making clothes, advising others who seek your advice—it doesn’t do to lie. People sense you’re lying and you lose their trust. There’s a way to mix charm and criticism in order to get the result you want, whether it’s from a sample maker you’re guiding to remake a piece with a finer hand, or someone who’s asked your advice about what to wear. Ellie was my first example of this sort of charm offensive—a kind of fashion tact that those in positions of authority seemed to know a lot about. I was open to her because she seemed really to care about me, and not just as a favor to my father. At the end of the first meeting she advised me to take adult design classes at Parsons in the evenings, and to apply full time to the Parsons design program when I finished high school. At that time Parsons was one of the finest design educations available. Although I still think of fashion as a lighthearted endeavor, Ellie Fishman approached it like it was a noble profession—an art form. It wasn’t just about what women wore to temple and dressed their daughters in to marry them off. Ellie spoke of designers like they were prophets. She advised me to stop what I was doing with Sarah immediately, which came as a great relief. As much fun as I was having with Sarah, there was something impure about it. I was ready to say goodbye to garment bags in the forest-green Jaguar trunk and schlepping to factories in Ossining. What Ellie was suggesting seemed bigger and more exciting than where I was headed with that little side business. If I was going to knuckle down and be a designer I would do it the right way. What she was suggesting was a direct line from me to the big time, to the world of Halston and Bill Blass. The things she said echoed what I had been thinking and hoping—that there was something greater and more dignified to hold out for.

  Ellie Fishman made a few calls and sent me to meet some of her designer friends, including the great Mollie Parnis, who was known for her strictly tailored suits and dresses. She advised me to learn all I could about construction and mourned the fact that she didn’t know how to instruct seamstresses to make her designs through demonstration. She claimed she was “at the mercy of pattern makers.”

  Ellie also called her friend Anthony Muto. He had a very successful collection called A.M./P.M., which made smart dresses that a woman could wear for day into cocktails. His atelier was the most glamourous place I had been to yet—a far cry from my motley basement atelier and the depressing factories on McDonald Avenue. Great natural light streamed in through big industrial windows, emphasizing the high loft ceilings and the soaring shelf units that held endless bolts of fabrics organized by color and weight. But the crucial elements hung on the wall in the form of his sketches, and on the mannequins—the fascinating half-finished clothes that represented all the possibilities on Earth and seemed to be sewn by the hands of angels.

  He looked through my sketches, which I accompanied with a running commentary of self-disparaging remarks. I didn’t think much of my work, especially after seeing his. And whatever I wore that day felt wrong from the moment I set foot in that office. Especially compared to his loose-fitting silk shirt and triple-pleated leather trousers. (Yes, he wore leather trousers, too. It was an epidemic.) I was just too young and too inexperienced to feel anything but awkward. He was austere both in appearance and personality. Friendly but formal. He didn’t say much. He also praised me right away and then went on to criticize me in that fashion-tactful way. He treated me like an equal, which tempered the spate of criticism that followed. I wasn’t really aware yet of the pervading homosexual culture in fashion, and I’m still not sure if he was gay. It didn’t matter. Even the straightest man in the fashion business has an honorary gay status in my book. (Especially if he’s wearing triple-pleated leather trousers.) I aspired to his look because he was thin and well-styled and talented and sphinxlike.

  He eyed me up and down in a way I wasn’t used to being looked at. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Oh god,” he said. “And what made you start sketching?”

  “I don’t know. I like clothes.”

  He went through each sketch with me and revealed what was good, what was right, and what was wrong.

  I wasn’t sure why, but I was very drawn to this man. Not sexually attracted. More as a role model. A man functioning in an identity that was close to one I dreamed of for myself. I knew exactly what I needed to know about him, no more, no less. He wasn’t flamboyant like Michael Sherman or an intimidating tastemaker like John Banter. I came away from the meeting inspired—mixed with my signature touch of depression and languor. I committed to the idea that there was a world where I would be accepted, but I felt the huge distance between where I was and that future location. Anthony Muto was the ambassador for the place where I wanted to go. The fashion world appeared to be a rarified environment where people like me were accepted and even, at times, exalted.

  When I got back home to Brooklyn that night, I sulked. Maybe for
too long. My father, sensing something was wrong, took me aside and asked me “if anything fishy happened” in the meeting that afternoon. He told me he thought Anthony Muto was one of those “fairies” and that if I was going into the fashion business I would have to be careful of them because they were everywhere. Right, I thought to myself. One big one right under your nose.

  I was getting closer. I was still too scared to call myself gay, and it felt like I’d have to roll a boulder up a hill to reach my goal of living as a gay man. Part of that great burden came from the fact that in order to find real acceptance I’d have to leave the past behind once and for all. I made up my mind to do exactly that.

  13

  My senior year in high school I was cast as Touchstone in our production of As You Like It, and the choice of that part for me was far more meaningful than my drama teachers could have known. I was enthralled by the definition when I looked up the word: “a fine piece of jasper that is employed to tell the value of gold; a standard or criterion by which something is judged or recognized.” The issue of authenticity was especially big for me right at that time. I might not have fully come out until my first year in college, but the major reckoning, the confrontation, the admission of it to those of my friends closest to me, took place in my senior year, and it was all very tied up in that Shakespeare production. Integrity regarding the subject of my homosexuality was the motivating idea in my life; reckoning with it, digesting it, and ultimately tying that identity to the making of art that reflected who I was.