Guest Strategist Haul: What Isaac Mizrahi Bought in March

I kind of live in the back seat of my car, and I feel boorish because there’s no garbage. The designer of the Mercedes S-Class or whatever neglected to think about awastepaper basket, and it’s been all these years that I’ve been in the back seat feeling ridiculous like some boor, dropping newspapers or magazines or wrappers on the floor of my car. So I got a gift basket fromChelsea Market Basketsto actually just use as a wastepaper basket. It’s so gratifying. Because I also live in my car, I got two extra keys made for my apartment atBarney’s Hardware. I’m so scared I’ll get to Long Island or New York and not have my keys, but now I just keep them in my car, which is the constant. It really is just like a giantpurseon wheels.

Oh, my god. Well! If you don’t know about them, darling, it’s time you did. Lock & Lock make the greatest things. Literally, online shopping is so gratifying. You click something, and the next minute it’s at your door, and your problem is solved. I buymine from QVC, but you can find them at Amazon, too. So if you have leftovers — I can’t stand Saran wrap on a bowl — these have locking lids. I have a place in Bridgehampton and New York and a place in Pennsylvania, so I always have to bring food back and forth. These are just great, and I particularly like the glass variety. They make a lot of plastic, but even that is great. You could do theTupperware or Glad, but with this, I feel much better about putting it in the dishwasher and knowing it will last forever. And then when you bring something to someone’s house, it’s just a bit more special, you know? It’s fabulous.

Everything I like is being discontinued. Mandragore is the best thing in the world. I went to the actualAnnick Goutal shopbecause online is complete chaos — you have to go throughBarneysorBergdorf Goodmanor their own site, and it’s never clear what they have or don’t vis-à-viscologne or eau de toiletteor whatever — with this stuff, you need theparfum! Otherwise thescentjust evaporates! It was so gratifying to be at the store on Madison Avenue, where they’ve actually got the Mandragore. They’re discontinuing it, so I got as many bottles as I could (five).Le Chevrefeuilleis being discontinued, so I bought a few bottles of that, too. I feel like I’m cursed in that way. Whoever makes what I love always decides to discontinue it. I guess it must mean I have singular taste.

I just startedreadingProust three or four months ago, and I’m obsessed with it. I’m kind of doing it under the auspices of my good friend Caroline Weber, who’s here and there giving me some tutelage, as she’s a scholar on the subject. So now she’s publishing this book on the three duchesses who inspired Proust and of course I preordered it.

I have a bunch of stuff from Astier de Villatte andJohn Derian, and it’s faience and very, very, very delicate-looking. You think you’d look at it and it’d break, but it doesn’t. I knock that shit around and it’s fine. I have a giant set of it, but I just got this beautiful bowl that’s this perfect object and I just love it. I play bridge a lot, and if you’re servingchipsorpopcorn, it’s great, and you put it in the bowl, and it feels fancier. Especially if it’s diet popcorn, you’ll feel even better about it. It’s like you get the indulgence from the bowl.

I bought a thin white binder fromStevdanto use as my script for a show I’m doing with Mark Morris. This is how I work onstage — I have some kind of notes, and especially when you’re on set like where you’re not rehearsing your head off and need to have notes, a binder is so necessary. It’s a cabaret show where we sing duets, and then he sings some numbers and I sing some numbers. The best part is, I walked into the rehearsal with Mark and I had the binder with the graphic of the actual show slipped into the front cover, so it felt very official and type A.

I needed a new case becausemy iPad casewas falling apart. I use my iPad for one thing, which is to watch movies when I drive back and forth to QVC, and the thing continues to work. It’s actually the first-generationiPad, if you can believe it, and when something works, you can’t bring yourself to replace it. It might be ten years old at this point. So no iPad case fits it — I have to go online and measure it, and it takes an hour just to order the right case so it stands up in the crazy way right in my lap. Until it actually dies, I have to keep buying cases. I’ve bought three already.

Um, well, she’s amazing. You must go if you haven’t. It’s the best place in the world. It’sveryorderly. It’s not like a lot of bakeries that are a nightmare and impossible to navigate. Here, you walk in and it’s almost like walking into a beautifullyorganized office— it’s all put out in the nicest way, so everything’s not only a great baked good but well-served.

I have this George Nelson tableclockthat’s this beautiful brass thing, and it just stopped dead. I think I opened the back with a tiny screwdriver, and one of the tiny motors got a bit corroded. I brought it to Vitra, and you know what, they just replaced it. How nice is that?

This is a Mercury-retrograde cautionary tale. So I had theseglassesI’d been using toreadfor 15 years, and I went to the eye doctor because I needed a checkup, and he actually gave me a stronger prescription. Well, the new prescription is just too strong, and now in order to read, I have to hold the words six to eight inches from my face, which will not do. So I ordered these Ray-Bans with progressive lenses because my doctor also thinks I need to see distances. I like the square Ray-Bans because they look fine on me, but I also have, no kidding, like 30 pairs of the round ones, which I think look really great on me, too.

My cousin had a Seder and I called my assistant and said, “We need to sendflowersto Arleen!” She sent some lovely parrot tulips fromMiho, and you know what’s funny is that my cousin already had regular tulips, so then we had the parrot tulips for the dessert table. It was just serendipitous.

I had this one spot for adrawingand saw this lovely one at this gallery by someone I used to work with called Sam Wilson. It’s so beautiful — it’s calledLife Vest, and is the loveliest pairing of red and blue. It looks almost like a flag, but it’s actually the flat print of a life vest. It’s simple and pleasing and weirdly soothing when you look at it.

I bought 15 yards of black cotton-blend knit to have six newyoga pantsmade. I drive my poorassistantsnuts because sometimes I’ve made them in all cotton, and then sometimes I prefer this fabric that’s just great because it doesn’t pill when you wash it. It confuses them! I get my pants washed so often that the blend is nice. My life is dictated bylaundry. Laundry andfood storage. We adore those. I think that’s a very American thing, isn’t it?