A 1998 Index Magazine interview with fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi vs. a 2025 Interview Magazine interview with novelist Olivia Kan-Sperling.
Isaac Mizrahi: Everything is your own choice.
Olivia Kan-Sperling: Exactly. Wow.
Mizrahi: That's why the American thing is really, really important.
Kan-Sperling: You notice that all of these businesses are named in this very literal way after the effect that they were supposed to have, whereas there wouldn’t be an American hotel that’s called Premium Best Hotel. [Laughs]
Mizrahi: Like it had been in a closet for 30 years and the door was ajar, and the sunlight hit it at just that angle every single day.
•••
Kan-Sperling: Yeah. Oh, that’s so sad.
Mizrahi: Yeah, it's one tiny, tiny little paragraph.
Kan-Sperling: I have no idea why. By the end of the book, that distinction doesn’t even make sense, I guess.
Mizrahi: That's what sells magazines and that's what sells clothes too, you know.
Kan-Sperling: I’m not sure if that actually has any effect on society, but it’s so different than the words you see walking around New York City.
•••
Mizrahi: That's what shocks me. And it was always, "Oh, you're fabulous," but then, "Ha-ha, what a freak."
Kan-Sperling: That’s true. There was a plague or something.
Mizrahi: The work is just so unbelievably exquisite.
Kan-Sperling: Right? Oh my god.
Mizrahi: Me too.