Hi, welcome back to just be with Bethany. So I come from a place of yes and everyone is saying like, don't let the door hit you in the ass of 20, 20, like everyone saying goodbye to 20, 20. And I get it. It has not been a delightful year, but I am a type of person that Billy and listen, I'm a successful, thriving, healthy, wealthy person. And so I don't want to get slammed for this.

But I have my own challenges. I haven't discussed publicly, like serious, serious challenges that have happened during this time that I've not discussed publicly, not to be compared with people who are on welfare lines or don't have money. But I've had some serious stuff go down and healthwise and personal life was and yeah, I've had some serious stuff going on, so. I always choose to find meaning what choice you have, if I have a surgery, I choose to say, OK, let me meditate or drink organic juices or breathe or use this time to heal mentally or emotionally.

I'm just that person that doesn't sit around and just talk about how bad everything is. I, I use these rants for that. But no, I don't. I want to say like what is the meaning of something. This has to be happening for a reason. Is it a global reset? Is it less superficiality, is it health and reflection, is it get bad people out of my life and only and add new good people, is it?

I did an Instagram post about this, but is it realizing our mortality? I mean, I have never spent more time with my child and I have friends who are college students that have spent time with their children will never, ever have gone. That would never have gotten that experience because they're out of the nest. So to have your kids back in the nest to sit down and have a meal, to cook, to have my daughter, my daughter knows how to make sauteed pasta, not just poor Aja over noodles, like she knows how to make a real almost restaurant dish of pasta.

And she started eating salads and she bakes. And we've sat down at meals and we've snuggled and we've been like, I call my corn dream a corn team. I would never have gotten that. That is time is so much more valuable than money and I wouldn't have had that and I wouldn't have reflected as much and I wouldn't realize what I want and who I am. And so I have to take twenty twenty something that is part of history that will always have certain meaning in my life.

And I'm not a person who believes in regret. I don't go backwards. Obviously, if you've lost a loved one, you have to spend time with them. Reading gets on Thanksgiving or Christmas present. That is a whole different story. And I'm not belittling people's experience. I just mean when you are in a storm, you have to try to find something to hold on to and breathe through it. And it's part of your path and your journey.

So I have tried to make meaning out of this experience and try to find the gas and find the positive and try to not be a stone deer, because I want to plant seeds for the time after when people will be businesses will flourish again and activity will come back. And I want to remember and try to really like my body, remember? How superficial, I thought certain things and people were and how I love not being a vain person, I'm not to begin with, but even now, just being like what's most important is rest and health and family and love and all of that.

So I am entering twenty, twenty one. I'm opening the door to closing the door before you in the bank and there's a new year. And my resolutions, which I never make, I chose to make, are to allow myself to be loved, be more open to love, be kinder. I would say less judgmental isn't really going to happen. So let's not set the bar too high to be more, maybe, maybe more patient, more tolerant and just be happier.

Like I chose on New Year's Eve tonight, I was in a little bit of a mood and and I chose to just turn the ship around. And just like you could choose happiness, it sounds cheesy, but you can choose to be happy and just find a way to turn it around. And that for me is really good.

My guest today is Isaac Mizrahi. I have known him for years. I love him. He is a fashion designer, a TV presenter, a writer and a producer. And he's a great person. He is a fashion icon. He is interesting. He is kind. I really can't say enough beautiful things about him. He is the author of his two thousand ninety memoir, I Am. And it's a really great show. You are going to love this conversation.

What's up, Isaac? Oh, hello, Bethany, how are you? I'm OK, actually, how are you? Well, I'm really excited and I don't know how much you know about this podcast, but the filter is extraordinary. People, game changers, visionaries, moguls, people who have really sort of created success in their own non traditional way. And I read a lot about your mother's influence in your life and even your father's influence in your life and being very Jewish and going to deal New Jersey and being a Syrian Jew, Syrian Jew is just curious to this big, scary thing.

And there's a whole a whole weirdness about how they refused to comply with mask wearing and like shutting stuff down and now they're being shut down in Brooklyn. Did you know that this whole community, it's like spiking in their community because they won't stop congregating know.

So faith is more important than the pandemic? Is that what it is, that the concept?

Yes, faith is more important than science to them, I guess.

And but there are pockets like Syrian Jews are all in deal, like they all like to live together and cluster together and build houses like Grecian temples. Exactly.

And they migrate south and they migrate to Florida and they come back for the holidays. I mean, it's a crazy thing. And, you know, my sisters and my mom are still really involved with that whole tradition. It's a little crazy.

I didn't mean to go there, but I actually know someone. I know a Syrian Jew who married a serious Italian guy and obviously is gay. And that was a big, big deal. And obviously, the kids have to go to Jewish school and it's so important. So how does is your you're married and is your husband a Syrian Jew? Hell, no.

My husband is like he's biracial. He's Puerto Rican. And, you know, he's like a typical American whereby he has a lot of different kind of ethnicities involved. But wait a minute. But I will say one thing, Bethany. It's sort of interesting to note, like being an outsider is not always such a terrible thing, you know, and it gets such a bad rap now with young parents and young parents being so, so, so afraid of their kids being outsiders.

You know, and I understand that it's heartbreaking to watch, but and you know what? I wrote this memoir and I wrote a lot about how terrible my childhood was and how outside I felt with everything. And my mother read it, by the way, she read it a thousand times, like some major, major issues like the Madame Bovary of the Jews at this point. But anyway, you know, and like when she read it, she said to me, gosh, I feel so awful.

I never knew. I never knew. And I thought, well, you know, that's kind of negligent. Not not to be able to see that. It's like a crazy I guess there was denial has been around since, you know, since the beginning of time. But I think also that, you know, being on the outside of something and not necessarily wishing you could be on the inside, because that's really not one that's never been a trade of my where I look longingly at the inside.

And I honestly think that's the trick to my success because, you know, like fashion culture has a very, very deep, scary inside, you know, where they make up things and they go, yeah, not anything past this length that the knee or that length of the thigh or like heroin chic. Shame on them or something. Right?

I mean, they make up these crazy things.

And I was always able to kind of like stand on the outside of all of that and go maybe not so much heroin, you know, like shame on you. And I'm just going to do pretty clothes or something. And as you know, like, I don't no longer do the sort of couture thing. Right. And that is like mostly by choice. You know, I recognized being able to stand apart from it for a second, that it was kind of going away and then it was becoming something different from what I had originally thought.

It might become something really fun and beautiful for me, where it just became this weird, like kind of fetish thing. And I went, now, you know, I'm not going to get into this. This is for like, you know, five customers at Bergdorf Goodman who who who balance their meds this week and can finally make it to Betty Holbrook's office and go, yes, I spent twenty thousand dollars on this sweater, you know what I mean?

It's like, I don't give a damn. I don't care. I do now.

And you've hit on a couple of things that I already had wanted to talk about. So I'm going to go through a couple that I literally took notes about. A couple of things that I had written down I want to talk to you about. OK, so you did a lot of my outline, which I was perfectly in No. One. What was more jarring and to your parents not continuing to be really religious or being gay, what was a bigger offense or a bigger shock or a bigger disappointment?

I think probably the gay thing. You know, first of all, my dad died before I had a chance to tell him. He died when I was about twenty. And I told my mom when I was about I would say. 16 or 17, and I couldn't you know, again, it was like, you know, I knew that she knew when she said she didn't, did she sort of cried, but it felt like a little staged, if you really want to know.

And I know that she wanted to check the box like she was being a compassionate. I accept you.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not the compassionate thing. She wanted to register that it was a terrible, terrible life choice and that I should really not be trying not to be like, you know, it was like, oh, my God, what are you going to do? What are we going to do? You can't tell your father. Don't tell your father.

Don't do a thing. Just stop, freeze. And no, it wasn't at all darling, in the nineteen seventies or whatever in nineteen sixty one. So that makes me fifty eight. OK, right. And in those days are you kidding. Like gay was not even I mean and so you understand like when I told her it was terrible and I told my sisters too and everybody cried like what is this going to do to our family's reputation. You know, because I promise you this was a very, very, very big factor in it in that community.

You know, like the girls were only born. I promise you, the girls are only born in that community to have more babies. Boy, I know.

And they get them to be married by twenty one is a Syrian Jew. Twenty one. Excuse me, had a sixteen. Seventeen. My sisters were old maids at twenty one and those days. Oh wow. And and so it was like the my sister's marriage ability actually hinged on keeping my um sexuality a secret because it was a genetic flaw. I'm not kidding you. So that's crazy. Insane, insane. And I mean not not to mention the fact that, you know, gays were a complete persona non grata in that community.

And weirdly, Bethany, I never sort of sat apart and said, oh, I wish I was straight or, oh, I wish I could be accepted by people as a gay person. I was like, I don't give a shit about these things. They're so wrong. And then the other thing I was going to say was that, you know, within that whole community, just I mean, it was such an appalling idea that it I don't even think they understood what it meant to be.

You know, it's so Adam couldn't you couldn't say you couldn't say, well, if you're gay, that means you like you know, you suck dick and you get fucking. What are you like? They couldn't never and they call you a faggot. And I don't even think they knew what the hell that I was a crazy Bethanie. It was like, yeah, because if I was effeminate, which I was, you know, people would never equate it to my like going to bed with like they would never.

They would never. And they would call me a fag and they would call me a sissy and they would yell anyway.

So you talked about fashion a minute ago, and it's funny because because fashion does the word fashion, does it mean anything to me? I have a clothing line and I design it. I don't sell it and sketch it. But the word fashion doesn't mean anything to me. So I want to really understand what it meant to you and what it means to you.

That's a good question. It really is a good point. And I'll tell you, like it's so heavily goes back to the discussion we started. Right. Which is like, you know, the thought that I was never this mercenary, like I never cared about making money. And by the way, you know, if I cared about making money, I would be a Syrian Jew in New Jersey or.

No, no, no.

They lose their money, which means finally they have to pay their taxes and that means they just have to go to jail.

But the garment industry is run by Syrian Jews in New Jersey.

Yeah, but I mean, if I really wanted to make money, it would have been a whole different I mean, like in the beginning, that's part of the reason it didn't work for me, the whole kind of couture business, because I was not versed. And yet I worked in design rooms for years, for ten years before I started my own company. But I worked like sewing and making clothes and fittings and styling and putting together and shows.

Right. But like basically the fashion business that existed, that very high end kind of Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue. I'm saying right now that exists really as a retail business and as a markdown business, you know.

What do you mean a markdown? So stuff was there for a minute that from the runway, sort of like inspired by the runway. And then all of a sudden it went down the channels to the discount rack, then down to Loman's, if you go.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you were a designer, a designer, like on the level of, you know, sort of Donna Karan or Marc Jacobs or Isaac Mizrahi in those days or Talban or something, an American designer, the way even Chanel and all of those labels, Dolce Gabbana, anything you make a deal with the store, you get real estate in a store and lust. And it's like on HSN, you have to do it certain dollars per minute.

Are they going to come and say to you, we have to rethink this because. Right. But in the retail world of the eighties and nineties, two thousands, it was all about markdowns. And it was like, if you get this real estate in the store, you either pay the real estate or you pay the markdowns. If they can't sell your clothes at full price, you have to make up for it somehow. And that's the way it was done for years.

And I never and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're telling me that the couture this incredible it's like furs. You know, like what turned me off originally to the whole idea was a furs was not necessarily so much the idea about I mean, of course, like now I would never go near a fur. Right, because I was it took me all this time. But in the beginning, I was so disgusted that there was like, you know, cut rate Sable's.

It was like, excuse me, that is such an oxymoron. Like, how do you have the most precious thing, this thing you just like slaughtered and now you're going to market. It's like you're going to mark down. That doesn't make sense to me. Is there anything sacred, you know?

Well, because you thought of it as art, like you're not slashing the price of a Picasso was an art that was that was political and art that was accessible even at that high price. I always thought that needs to be you need to walk this line, darling. You're walking you're showing this woman in her life. That is a responsibility, you know, and it didn't always work.

When I signed my deal with Chanel, by the way, in the night in the early 1990s.

What do you mean sign your deal? What did that mean? Yeah, they were my backers.

They owned, I think originally, like, I don't know what percentage of my my business, OK, and they were they backed it, you know, and I thought what a great thing, because they don't do licensing. You know, it's Chanel. There's no such thing as licensing. They make the bags.

What he's saying is they don't private label a lot of celebrities and a lot of a lot of names, whether it's Tommy Hilfiger or Michael Kors or Marc Jacobs. They're not making their own bags. They're licensing their name. So some other private label company wherever, just a factory that might also make bags for Ralph Lauren or something. They're making it and putting the label on it. And Michael Kors is selling it as if Michael Kors in his own backyard factory is making it.

Isaach saying that Chanel and places like Airmen's and Louis Vuitton to this day, they make all of their own. They control their own factories, their own product. Is that what you saying?

Yes. Yes. But like Chanel, to to to a major extent, darling, Chanel owns a factory that makes the juice that goes in the bottles of the of the perfume. OK, so that is a real where they call that a vertical operation.

OK, that is amazing. And it's controlling your own brand. The fact that they've all done so well and bencic become so big by controlling their own brand like that. That is gangster.

That's gangster, that's gangster. But also if you try to start a handbag factory tomorrow and really I mean the. It's not going to work, but if you have these incredible factories that have been established and pretty much you own the real estate that the factories that you know what I mean? It's just so vertical there. It's crazy. And when I signed that deal, I thought, well, this is my this is my big chance. I'm going to do this.

I'm going to you know, because there was legend about Chanel, like they would burn the clothes that would rip the labels out and burn the clothes before they mark them down here. I never thought you could never find Chanel at Loman's. You could never find Chanel on sale. And that was legend. And I thought, well, this is my this is my moment. I'm so excited. That's what I thought. I thought old clothes that at that level, anyway, you should respect that.

It's like, well, what does it mean if you can get that same thing? That was yesterday. That was twelve hundred dollars tomorrow at century 21 for like four hundred. What does it mean to me that it's meaningless.

But do you think that these companies that have such an incredible and incredibly egregious markup, do you think that, like, they deserve it because they've gone like pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered? Like if they were more like a Tory Burch five hundred or three hundred dollar bag, which is maybe a triple markup or quadruple market versus a thousand percent markup, do you think that there's any anything there?

You know, honestly, it's I believe in spending more on things than I do on sales and markups and markdowns and knockoffs. I think you should go to the source and buy that. Listen, you're going to Neiman Marcus, and that is a used to be anyway, I haven't been in a very long time, but you would go to even Marcus. So much for like the theater and the beauty of just being in that wonderful place. I mean it and that costs are like that costs a lot of money by the minute you walk in the fucking door at Bergdorf Goodman, someone says, would you like a glass of champagne?

I mean, of course, if you're Ramona, you say, yes, I would like I mean, the rest of us don't want this, but they have to pay someone to give Ramona champagne, you know what I mean?

And so you're talking about the fact that it costs ninety nine cents to buy a box of pasta. But you've got this amazing restaurant and your pasta cost thirty two dollars.

But it's worth every penny because the experience and also the experience, but also, by the way, some scary, terrible, like, you know, person back there is screaming at people making the pasta. They have like a pasta program, you know, about food. Right? Like it's not just a box of pasta, of course. So, you know, so like a Chanel bag isn't just it's just not the same thing. The quilting is made of lamb's wool and the leather itself is like, you know, kids skin and the silk thread and the way they line the thing and the and the hardware isn't it isn't plated.

It's actually hardware, you know what I mean?

So it's like every single thing. I agree.

I agree. And you feel better. OK, so do you feel that you're very respected to this day in the fashion industry, like you have street cred?

I don't know. I don't I don't really. I don't really I don't mean to sound.

I don't mean to sound defensive or or or like sort of egregious or something, but I don't really care that much. And I think that's the key to my success. Maybe it's like I don't care. It's like, you know, whoever says whatever they say about me is absolutely entitled to that opinion. And because I say shit about people, honey, and I'm allowed to say your opinion, it's my opinion.

But he's got one. Yeah. Are you like Joan Rivers, where if your calendar is not full, you feel like you're either irrelevant or it's not happening? Or do you identify yourself by how busy you are?

Well, so much like Joan Rivers and so many different ways. But yes. And and it's so funny. Like recently, of course, with covid and everything, you know, I don't know. Is your calendar as full as it used to be? Yes, it is, but it's all virtual. I mean, are you in cars as much and on planes as much? Hell, no, I don't care. Even if you are Bethenny Frankel, you are not in cars as much.

No, no, no, no. My business has this is not a this is literally the jet. My business has never, ever been bigger than it is right now. Not and I don't it's the weirdest thing. It is busier than it has ever been. But no, I'm not in cars and on planes. I think for people at home, this is a time to nest and and think and process and plan versus just panicking because the world's upside down.

It's a snow globe that's been turned upside down. And you got it. Either you're going to if you had a 401k and you lost your job, now's the time you have to jump and fly. So you said earlier that being gay has been an asset to you, and Ryan Murphy told me that part of the major driving factor in his success was growing up through that, coming up through that time of AIDS where so many people were dying around him.

And he worked so hard because he felt like he had a target on his back. He had so much he had to do because in any day he could drop dead. And I thought that was fascinating.

So true. He's right about that. I was just thinking about this, like, you know, when I was again, you know, it's in my memoir, I wrote this memoir called I Am. And there's a whole thing about this guy called Brian Greenbaum. He was a really close friend of mine. He was like maybe the fifth person that I knew to die of AIDS, but he was really close in the circle of my friends. He was the boyfriend of my friend Christopher Edstrom.

Christopher was my best friend and his his boyfriend was Brian. And he died and he was really sick for so long. And it was so heartbreaking to all of us and so tragic. And it's like, you know, at that age when you're in your 20s, you don't really stop to think. But Ryan Murphy is right in that not only did it get us to, like, stop and think, but it also kind of energized us. Fuck it.

I'm going to do this for these people who couldn't do it for themselves.

You know, that's exactly what he's saying. He needs he owes it to everybody. Exactly. For the last question, you are a housewife or a mom that's in their 40s living anywhere in the country, forgetting that not necessarily about the pandemic, but what is the best look for them right now?

Well, you know, I have to say, like, I don't love leaking so much. I'm not a leg guy. I'm also weirdly like I love jeans, but I don't think everyone needs to wear jeans. Right. Everybody says a lot of jeans. It's a big part of the fashion business and it's great. But I love, you know, I love like like if I could I would look like Audrey Hepburn all the time or Katharine Hepburn or Katharine like either of the Hepburn's right.

I would either be in, like, skinny little pants to the ankle with a little pointy flat, you know, and then something on the top, whatever makes you comfortable. By the way, the little pants could be made in like wool jersey or some kind of wonderful knit. They don't have to be, you know, whatever. They don't have to be a woven fabric. So it's such an easy silhouette. I love that little thing.

You're describing feminine, masculine elegance. That's simple. And also a little bit you do like a little bit of cute, but it's sophisticated and you're just describing elegance and class. That's what you're describing.

But I also just like the word Hepburn, OK? I like the word you should start a sub line. So you are amazing. And I'm just grateful because I say to people that I have on here are so extraordinary and so busy that to give me an hour of their time is really like more valuable than money. So I appreciate it greatly. And you going there and you being so transparent because this really helps people and you are so different from other guests that I have so good luck with everything and stay in touch.

And thank you for taking my calls when I ask you about advice. Are you kidding? Any time.

So that was different and interesting and amazing. I know Isaac, I mean, I know him through sort of somewhat being out and about. I mean, we just are aware of each other. I did a show he had years ago, and he's genuine. And you can see he's very interesting.

He's a very colorful and such an unpredictable and difficult to explain life. I mean, he doesn't like the word journey, maybe because he's been on the craziest one I can even think of.

But I like that I keep bringing people here that offer something different, you know, so he has a take on fashion and then also what fashion meant then when he was coming up, what fashion means or doesn't mean now, even just a little bit of fashion advice as to what people should wear. But definitely he has his own business philosophy and he has obviously had a non-traditional route. And so you kind of never going to get something that you expect to hear each time is going to be someone different that has undoubtedly succeeded in business, but in all different businesses.

So I understand that whoever I have on here, you're going to learn something from them and that you can be whoever you want to be in your business. So that's what's very liberating about all of this. So please rate review and subscribe to just be with Bethenny because we're doing so incredibly well because of you.

And I think about you every day and I appreciate it so much and I'm loving this. So thank you so much.

Just be his hosted and executive produced by me, Bethenny Frankel, Bedrail Productions and Endeavor Content, our managing producer is Samantha Allison and our producer is Caroline Hamilton. Corey Preventer is our consulting producer with the ever faithful, Sarah Cattanach as our assistant producer. Our development executive is Nayantara. Roy just B is a production of Endeavour content and spoke media. This episode was mixed by Sam Baer. And to catch more moments from the show, follow us on Instagram at just.