Isaac Mizrahi Launches Lingerie Collection

By Emily Gyben 04/30/12 at 01:00 PM

Photo courtesy of George Chinsee/WWD

A look from Isaac Mizrahi's new lingerie line.

Wondering how to complete your Isaac Mizrahi wardrobe? Underthings, of course!

Isaac Mizrahi has inked a licensing deal with Xcel Brands Inc. to create his first collection of intimates, Women’s Wear Daily reports.

“Christian Dior said, ‘There is no fashion without foundations,’” Mizrahi said. “Undergarments are so wonderful and interesting to me, and now it’s all about shaping and enhancement. That really excites me because you can be all of these things — curvy, busty… The idea is to build a collection of intimate apparel around shapewear.”

The collection, which will retail between $12 and $78 at department and specialty stores, includes bras and panties as well as shapewear.

The line is a new technical challenge for the newly-married Mizrahi, though corsetry has played a major role in his ready-to-wear collections in the past.

“I take the engineering of a bra very seriously,” he said. “It makes you grumpy if your undergarments aren’t right and if a bra doesn’t fit right… A bra is so much about a woman’s identity and how she feels about her breasts.”

Expect lots of color and signature Mizrahi touches, like polka dots, but the designer says that with this line, comfort is key.

“It has to be comfortable,” he said. “I was just talking about that with a friend who was saying women were always fainting in their corsets in the 18th century. But I said, if it’s made right you can wear it without fainting. If you make anything wrong, it’s going to be torture…I know even if it’s a T-shirt with the arm hole in the wrong place, I’ll come home and rip it off and throw it away…The proof of the pudding is if it sells. I kill myself about that because these things [shapers and corsets] are hard to make.”

Isaac Mizrahi New York intimates will hit stores for Spring 2013.