Isaac Mizrahi wants to do it all. Fashion, film, cabaret—even opera. It's just the way he's built.

“It started when I was a tiny kid. My piano teacher said, ‘You have to choose what you want to do. You can’t continue to study the piano for eight hours a day and be an actor and design clothes.’ I listened to what he said, and he made sense, but I couldn’t relate to that model. I am not a specialist.”

Indeed, Mizrahi, 48, has been called everything from Renaissance man to renegade, from inconsistent to a creative genius. And, most recently, “a complete icon,” by Liz Claiborne offi cials as they courted him to revamp their struggling label.

Mizrahi accepted the Claiborne creative director position in 2008, following a successful five-year run with Target. In helping the giant retailer become a hip style destination, he had taken a big professional risk by moving from high-end design to cheap chic for the mass consumer. In so doing, he paved the way for other designers to take the leap into the mainstream.

Seeds of Inspiration

“I never made the decision to be a fashion designer. It kind of picked me,” he tells SUCCESS. “I remember I had an epiphany about it in July of 1976. I was looking at the issue of Vogue that month—it was about the fall collection. It was the most fabulous thing; there was this portfolio of Avedon photography, Patti Hansen and Janice Dickinson in these unbelievable clothes. I have been an insomniac since I was about 12 years old, and I remember spending the whole night poring over that magazine and making the decision that I was going to do that.”

Much of Mizrahi’s inspiration for fashion and other undertakings comes from these moments. In fact, he claims his 2009 fall collection appeared to him in a dream. “And in my waking hours I just made them,” he says. “I hardly felt responsible. Of course, I’m responsible, but in the end, it’s so obvious to see that you are really a conduit for these things.”

Part of Mizrahi’s need to explore other genres, like entertaining or writing, arises from a restlessness and short attention span most people would fi nd troublesome. But Mizrahi shrugs it off. “I am easily bored,” he says. “I think it’s a way of being in the world. Some people just like to do a lot of things.”

Mizrahi approaches his drive to do new things with a frank and unorthodox belief that it is, indeed, all about the vision—and a versatility that started when he was very young. “

I had already been designing for so long. It was one of the many things that I did. I was an actor. I went to the performing arts high school and I was in the acting department, I played the piano, I did sketches, I made clothes. I had a puppet theater. That’s how I started to sew—by making puppets.”

Big Breaks

Mizrahi’s early perspective on fashion was very much from an outsider’s point of view, however. “When I was a kid, I was really fat, so I was always on the outside of fashion, looking at it and trying to master it somehow. In that way, I became an authority. I could never wear it. I remember it was the 1970s and platform shoes were very important, and I wanted them, but my mother wouldn’t let me have them, because, in those days, heavy people weren’t supposed to wear platform shoes. My way of grabbing back at that was to design platform shoes.”

Mizrahi underwent a transformation shortly thereafter when he entered New York’s High School of Performing Arts, where the Fame TV show and movie were based. He called it a “culture shock” and lost 75 pounds. And that was the beginning of a high-energy career that would cross disciplines, from design to acting to writing a comic book series.

After high school, Mizrahi attended the prestigious Parsons The New School for Design and met a man who would become his mentor—the legendary designer Perry Ellis. “

He was so incredibly fun to work with,” Mizrahi says. “He was such a shining example— he had amazing taste. I feel that everything I learned about textile came from Perry Ellis. [At Parsons] we had extensive classes about textiles and fabric and fi bers and burn tests. But the beauty, the luxury, the taste level of fabric, I got from Perry.”

Mizrahi’s first big break came in 1987 with his debut collection at a Bergdorf Goodman trunk show. The fashion editors loved him, and a career was launched. The trajectory, however, was not fi xed; there were ups and downs, triumphs and failures. He was criticized at times for inconsistency, for not having a singular look. But Mizrahi sees that as his own unique signature, or design strength.

Ahead of His Time

“I have a very hard time editing,” he says. “I don’t understand why an artist should edit his own work. That’s why I’m not as good at fashion as I am with design. Because I know when something is beautifully designed… but I don’t like to follow other people when it comes to fashion. And I notice that everybody sort of does the same thing at the same time, and that’s what makes the fashion.”

Instead, Mizrahi follows his own instincts, his own sense of what works. “I always try to think of something fresh, something innovative, and it almost comes from this weird psychic place. It often happens that two or three seasons later, people get into something that I was into two or three seasons earlier. That isn’t a feather in my cap. It doesn’t make me a good fashion designer. I have been making clothes for so long, it is about design for me more than it is about fashion.”

Mizrahi is, of course, a brilliant fashion designer, and has become a talent to be reckoned with outside the industry as well, with appearances in numerous television shows as well as a groundbreaking fashion documentary dedicated to his fall 1994 collection called Unzipped. He called the film his career highlight because “it synthesizes who I am in terms of a person who is into many multiple disciplines.” He also has made guest appearances on Sex and the City and Ugly Betty and was in Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks and Hollywood Ending.

Designing the Isaac Mizrahi line for Target was one of his boldest career moves, and an unorthodox business decision for a high-end New York designer. “At the time, it did not occur to me that it was a risk because I was resolved with the idea of really reaching out that way. But, of course, when we launched and told people about it, they all said, ‘Oh my God, what have you done—you really better not do that because it’s a risk.’ ”

The Target idea, a collaboration with his business partner Marisa Gardini, was a resounding success. Isaac Mizrahi became a household name.

‘If You See It’

“I would say, if you feel something in your heart, then you have nothing to worry about,” Mizrahi says. “If you see it, if you have a vision for it, then it’s no longer a risk.”

The biggest risk for Mizrahi, again, is boredom, the tedium and predictability of doing one thing and one thing only. “My strength is that I bore very easily,” he says. “

I really don’t like doing one thing—I like doing lots of things. I can’t just design a collection. I have TV shows I love to do, a cabaret act I do in New York at a place called Joe’s Pub. Some people see that as a detriment. Some people say ‘Can’t you focus?’ And I understand that comment, but I think about focused people, ‘How bored are you? Can you un-focus? Can you do more than one thing?’ It cuts both ways, that.”

These days, in addition to his work with Liz Claiborne, Mizrahi is co-hosting a new Bravo series, The Fashion Show, still does his cabaret at Joe’s Pub, and will star in QVC’s Isaac Mizrahi Live! reality TV/shopping channel show. He is also directing an opera in St. Louis next spring. “

What I have inside me is a confi dence in these endeavors. Before it became my job to be a television personality or design clothes or be a cabaret performer, I was doing it already. I felt kind of strong about it. Just because it was reality didn’t make it scarier. In my head, it’s scary or not scary—the real world doesn’t make it scary for me. The hard part is having the vision,” he says, “not realizing it.”

Follow Your Instincts

Another lesson he lives by is following his own desires. From his piano teacher to a lifetime of other people advising him to stay “focused,” Mizrahi believes his success comes from his decisions to do exactly what he wants to do—not what others tell him he should do. “

The great lesson I’ve learned over the last few years is to take the ego away and have patience. Do what you want—don’t let anyone tell you to do a version of what you want. Do exactly what you want, then wait it out,” he says. “Even if it takes for-e-ver. Even if you don’t blow up in two seconds as the biggest world-dominating company, stick to it, and you will grow and grow incrementally. Eventually, critical mass will matter.”

Mizrahi knows what’s next for him. “Immersion in the entertainment business,” he says. “I’m going to write a movie someday. I’m going to direct a movie someday, well, more than one. That’s what I really want to do. And I’m headed there.”

And, as with all new endeavors, he says he doesn’t know if he’ll succeed, but the execution may just be enough. “I don’t know if I’ll be good at it, but I know I’ll like doing it. If someone thinks I’m good, then I’m really happy about it.”