By Jessica Herndon
When Unzipped first sashayed onto screens in 1995, it wasn’t just a documentary — it was a cultural moment. The film didn’t simply lift the veil on the out-there, high-stakes world of fashion; it immortalized it, capturing designer Isaac Mizrahi at a creative peak as he crafted his iconic Fall 1994 collection, which was modeled by Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Veronica Webb, and more. Shot in black-and-white, Unzipped was, and remains, a love letter to one of fashion’s most electric eras. Now, 30 years later, the film returns to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of our From The Collection series.
At the helm of this masterpiece was Douglas Keeve, a celebrated fashion photographer before becoming a documentary filmmaker. He’s always had an innate knack for storytelling, and his filmmaking career has remained eclectic and fascinating because of it. Beyond Unzipped, he’s documented Naomi Campbell as she travels to South Africa to visit then-President Nelson Mandela for Naomi Conquers Africa, and in Hotel Gramercy Park, he follows Ian Schrager as he restores the iconic hotel. Next, he’ll bring us Polly, a deep look at the life and career of the late Vogue fashion editor, Polly Mellen.
Ahead of Unzipped’s return, we sit down with Keeve as he reflects on why Mizrahi was — and still is — an ideal documentary subject, oozing charisma and creative energy. He also waxes nostalgic about the “golden days” of fashion, shares wisdom for the next generation of filmmakers and fashion enthusiasts, and opens up about the challenges of capturing Mizrahi’s intimate world with 16mm film. So, cozy up, film and fashion devotees, and get ready to fall in love with Unzipped all over again!
So, when you watched the film again recently, how did you feel?
I shouldn’t say this, but I cried. It’s very emotional for me. When you’re making the film, it feels like such a piece of crap. It’s all over the place. You have too many characters and too many problems. But you forget. And I was watching the film and it was just like, “Wow, the story just sails along.” I was like, “How did that happen?” And I felt grateful to have been there. It was such an amazing time. It’s a bygone era, in a sense, the era of the supermodel. Today is good. But it’s different.
What feels different now?
When we shot [Unzipped], fashion was just on the cusp of radical changes. And before that and into that, you went away for a week or two and shot two pictures a day. And there was money. That gives you a lot of freedom to create and to think. We live in a world today where it’s immediate and fast and everything is low-budget and fast. And there’s a beauty to that, but you lose the contemplative moments. I mean, I hear this all the time from documentary filmmakers who take a long time to make a film and they say, “If I hadn’t had that year to be editing or something, it never would’ve been.”
What was it about Mizrahi that made you want to capture him and follow him for Unzipped?
Well, he was my boyfriend, which I didn’t care about in terms of if he was boring, I would’ve never cared. I’m kind of merciless that way. But Isaac was special. He was an entertainer. He had such depth, as a lot of fashion people do. Fashion people are extraordinary because they know about art, culture, science — you name it. They really have such a broad base to pull from. And you need that to make great pictures, be in fashion, and to be a designer. You need a sense of history and what came before you.
Isaac had all that. But he also had something that I cherished about being in the fashion world in those days, which was the doyennes. There were these people who spoke like nobody else and looked like nobody else and could turn a phrase. And they were drama queens and they were outlandish, and they were so talented. They did such beautiful things.
How do you feel your romantic relationship impacted the process of making the film, and what you were making?
Usually when you make a fly-on-the-wall doc, you have to work your way into the relationship with people. I already had that relationship. So, we skipped that part of the process. And he let me film him in the bathtub, talking to his mother. I wouldn’t let you do that in a million years. So, we had a certain comfortability. I don’t know how I made this film. I really don’t. I had a 16mm, Super 16mm camera with separate sync-sound. In those days, you had to load the mags. You had this thing called the changing bag, which is a black bag. You stuck your hands in so it wouldn’t get light on the film. And you open the film poster and put it in the mag and thread it properly and do all this stuff and then close it up and then pull it out and put it on the camera. And I was doing that in the bedroom while Isaac was watching Nanook of the North and sketching.
When you shot the film, did you have it mapped out so that it would chronicle one show to another — a bad review to great ones?
You can’t have investment in what happens. I don’t know about docs now. It’s probably very similar for a lot of them. But you’re a journalist, and you’re just documenting. And as much as you fall in love with your subjects, you can’t be so in love with them that you get too invested, because when bad things happen, that turns your eye, when good things happen, that turns your eye. So you have to be pretty militant — one side of your brain has to just be neutral. And you’re capturing all the horrible things that are going on, all the great things that are going on. And you learn just not to think about it too much.
We convinced Isaac to let a camera go out on the runway so that it could be in and amongst the girls, because I like to shoot with immediacy. When you shoot and the people are over there, you can feel it, but when you’re in the middle of them, it feels very different, and there’s a visceral quality to it.
So much of what we see in the film doesn’t feel calculated. Did you map out a lot of the footage?
Yes and no. There was a sense of adventure and, “Let’s do this, let’s do that.” When we went up to Eartha Kitt, I was just like, “Hey, Isaac, Eartha Kitt’s in town. Why don’t we just go up and film her?” And we did. We called her and we went up. And I’m sure she was like, “Oh, Isaac’s coming up. I’m going to get a bunch of dresses, a bunch of gowns.” But we just went up and it just was amazing. And that had nothing to do with anything. So when you’re making it, even if you’re trying to map out the movie in your head as best you can, you just don’t know. And what you learn in being a filmmaker is coverage, coverage, coverage, so you get as much stuff as you can.
Your film is iconic. In your Meet the Artist video, you talked about hoping that it still resonates today as it did when it came out in the ’90s. What did you want it to say then? What did you hope resonated?
I wouldn’t show it to any fashion people. I showed it to truck drivers and accountants and financial people. I showed it to anybody who didn’t give a shit about fashion because I wanted people who didn’t care about this world — I wanted it to work for them. I wanted to bring them that world and make it come alive. And I think that’s one reason why the film is so successful is because, I don’t like calling it a fashion documentary. I think it is a documentary about the creative process, about business, about passion. People still come up to me, like Ryan McGinley, who’s this great artist, and he said, “I saw the film, and that’s why I came to New York.” I heard that so much about this movie. That’s the power of cinema, to inspire and to change your life a little bit, and you take it home and it lives within you. And some of it’s disposable and some of it really changes your life.
What do you hope the next generation takes away from seeing Unzipped?
I think it tells you to dream and to work really, really, really hard, and that if you want it bad enough, you’re going to get it.
What are some of the best memories from working on the film?
There were things that [Mizrahi] was adamant not to put in, and we fought tooth and nail. It was a knock-down, drag-out fight over the dumbest things. He was playing the piano, “Clair de lune,” and he’s not playing it perfectly. And for me, that was the magic of it — it was the mistakes that made it so beautiful and real. And he was like, “I’m not going to have people hearing me play that, and you can’t use that.” He would get in the bathtub naked. He didn’t care. But he wouldn’t let me do “Clair de lune.”
And we went to Paris, to the Louvre, and it was so fabulous. We go into the costume archives and I was like, “Oh my God, this looks so bad.” So I made them drape all of the racks and everything in white muslin, so it was just this field of white everywhere, because I was like, “If we’re going to see the Louvre, it’s going to look special.” So, I redesigned the Louvre a little bit to be a little more fabulous.
How would you say that Unzipped set the stage for the work you’ve done since?
It kind of launched me and threw me out into the film world. And I’ll just say that the magic of doc, you get to go into other people’s worlds and other people’s lives. I spent a year and a half on the rodeo circuit. I went with Naomi [Campbell] to meet Nelson Mandela. I was right alongside Ian Schrager making the Gramercy Park Hotel for a year. These people didn’t have Masterclass back in those days. These people were the masterclass.
I was like, “Ian, how do you know how to do all this? How do you know how to make a hotel?” And he’s like, “You don’t. You got to learn it.”
To that point, when you began making films, were you just figuring it out as you went along?
Unzipped was my first film, although I’d been doing a lot of film work up to that point because I was a photographer. And I just kept saying to every client that I worked with, “Do you want to do a film?” I got my feet wet that way. And Nina [Santisi] and Isaac and I went all over the place, all over Hollywood. We had so many meetings and everyone was like, “Oh, the project sounds great. Good luck with it.”
Oh, wow! Was that after you’d finished or was that in the process?
That was right when we were starting — when we wanted to start, which I think is typical. It’s hard to sell a project.
And then you guys premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and then Miramax picked it up.
Yes. Miramax was a big deal at the time and we were thrilled. We thought we would be showing it in our living room.
Not so! So, nowadays, what do you look for in projects that you want to take on?
It’s whatever floats your boat. When I did the film on the rodeo, I had never been to a rodeo. I knew nothing. You don’t know what you’re going into. I saw a guy, a bull rider, die in the ring. The guy that we were following broke his back. You go into worlds that are just astonishing. I just see if there’s a spark.
I’m finishing a movie now. I’m back in fashion. I’m doing a kind of bookend to Unzipped, which is this film on this woman, Polly, who worked at Vogue for 30 years, Polly Mellen. She was one of those doyennes. She was the last of the doyennes. And that was a film I shot 20 years ago, but didn’t make it. It was on the shelf because I was just off to other things. She just passed away [in December 2024]. It’s really a special film. It’s about a bygone era. And I just feel so lucky to do what I do. It is not easy, but in spite of that, I love it so much.
What would be your advice to aspiring filmmakers, particularly doc filmmakers, on how to capture great moments and make a compelling doc?
Never turn the camera off, which your producer will hate you for. And never take no for an answer. I learned that from Polly and probably from Isaac. All people do is say, “No, you can’t do that. It’s forbidden. We can’t afford it. I’m not doing that.” And you have to be steadfast in your vision and so clear and strong about your vision that you don’t take no for an answer. How do you get those special moments? There’s a certain thing that you have to have when you’re like the fly on the wall — you kind of disappear. You have to know how to be invisible.
What is the trick?
It’s like a superpower. You have to know how to put down the cloak of invisibility, where people forget about you and they don’t notice you anymore. You have to learn that. One of the tricks is that you just are in their face every second. You’re next to them and the camera’s really close. And then you just pull back and you go in the farthest corner of the room and you just stand there and you’re filming. All of a sudden they feel like, “Where is he? He’s gone? Okay, now we can swear and take our clothes off,” or whatever.
Then, lastly, what do you hope your art does for people?
When I see a great movie, I run out of the theater and I go home and I start doing something. I start working on my film, start doing something, because I think that that’s what really great cinema does. But at the end of the day, all I’m here for is to make people laugh, cry, and fall in love. I want the audience to be transported, and I want to change their lives.
