By Jessica Herndon

For fashion devotees, Unzipped is the stuff of legend — a film so stylish and witty it practically invented the modern fashion documentary. Three decades after it first swept audiences off their feet, Unzipped returns to the Sundance Film Festival as part of our From the Collection section. A newly restored cut transports viewers back to that pivotal moment in 1994 when Isaac Mizrahi, then a breakout designer hungry for artistic glory, raced against the clock to launch his visionary new collection at New York Fashion Week. The result? Eternal chic! It is an all-access runway pass that remains as dazzling and dynamic today as it was 30 years ago.

Directed by fashion-photographer-turned-filmmaker Douglas Keeve, Unzipped offers an unfiltered look at Mizrahi’s unstoppable drive from a fresh sketch to the celebratory chaos of the runway. Editor Paula Heredia’s rapid-fire style only amplifies the whirlwind, darting between behind-the-scenes drama and fleeting moments of pure ’90s glam. And let’s not forget the parade of supermodels — Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Kate Moss, to name a few — whose every strut and pose adds a layer of iconic star power. Not to be outdone, the cinematography by Ellen Kuras oozes cool, slipping between dramatic black-and-white footage and bursts of color, sealing the film’s place in fashion folklore.

At the heart of Unzipped is the undeniable charisma of Mizrahi himself, a designer whose creations and persona shattered industry norms. Mizrahi’s wit and originality struck gold. His fearless approach to mixing high art and playful showmanship made him an unforgettable figure for the stylish and the starstruck. Keeve, meanwhile, brought his fashion-world expertise behind the lens, capturing the high-wire tension of go-sees, fittings, and photoshoots with an intimacy that still feels thrillingly fresh.

“The ’90s [were] just special and amazing, and especially in the film with Naomi, Cindy, Linda, Amber, Carla — I don’t think that’s happened again,” says Keeves post-screening. “It was just such a beautiful and magical time and putting this film together with all that stuff happening around — things were radical.” 

To capture all of the beauty and mess of the time, Keeves says he had “all these little tricks that I did to get good performances and get them to be themselves.” One of those was to keep recording. When an audience member at the screening asks, “When someone is frustrated or tired, how do you know when to turn off the camera?” Keeves says, “That is what you hope and pray for; they are really tired. That’s when it gets interesting. You don’t want people at their tip-top. You want to see them when times are hard.” He adds that he finds what people don’t like or don’t want you to use in a project about them is funny. “But this is why when you make a film, you can’t give consent over content to the person in the film because they hate it until they watch it with an audience, and then the audience loves it, and then they love it,” adds Keeves.

As the film returns to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, its influence on modern fashion storytelling is clearer than ever. Keeve effectively launched an entire subgenre of fashion docs by following Mizrahi’s relentless pursuit of glamour. The film’s fierce relevance is highlighted by its restoration by the Academy Film Archive, with the Getty Foundation’s support, ensuring its legacy continues with new audiences. In 1997, Sundance Institute jointly founded an archive program with the UCLA Film & Television Archive called the Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA. We restore films every year.

Today, as we rewatch this insider look at design studios and runway prep, we remember that Unzipped was the original blueprint for that behind-the-scenes buzz we crave. As Sundance Institute senior programmer and director of strategic initiatives John Nein put it while introducing the film: “It’s a fashion doc before fashion docs were fashionable.” 

How does Keeves feel about being one of the first to make this kind of movie? “It feels awesome,” he says as the crowd fills the room with loud applause. “In a way, I was dead serious about what I was doing, but I was also having fun. All these films that get made about fashion, they’re not that much fun, and I wanted people to see how crazy it was, how much fun it was, who these people are.” Thirty years on, it’s still the ultimate front-row ticket to an era when supermodels reigned supreme, creative sparks flew incessantly, and the runway lights never shone brighter.