Money for nothing and your clothes for free

Doonan, still trying valiantly to catch his plane, suggests I call Lisa Eisner, famous one-time muse to both Isaac Mizrahi and Tom Ford. I send Lisa an e-mail and she replies enthusiastically: "I can't wait to see what all these muses have to say for themselves."

It turns out that Eisner met Mizrahi while both were working at Perry Ellis and Mizrahi was not yet famous. They became very good friends. So what made her come to be known as Mizrahi's muse? What did she do?

"I would send him stuff. I would see something and say, 'This is so Isaac.'"

A few years later, Eisner's picture was on a Gucci billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Eisner is not a model, but a former fashion editor turned photographer. Nevertheless, she was Tom Ford's muse, so there she was.

How, in the name of all that is sweet and good, does one become Tom Ford's muse?

"I was working for Vogue in Paris, and Tom's boyfriend was living there, too, and we got to be really good friends."

But how do you go from friend to muse?

"You hang out, maybe you wear something," she says. I am frustrated. I am no closer to finding the path to my new chosen career than I was when I started. Then, suddenly Eisner perks up.

"I don't have that many gifts of talent," she says, "but one of the things I'm sort of 'gifted' in -- I don't know where the hell it takes you -- is that I can sort of pull something together really quickly. You know how people can throw a meal together in ten minutes? Well, I can sort of do that [with clothes]. Thank God! I wish you could get paid a lot of money for doing that.

"I love vintage, I'm a hunter for that. I find great things that don't look so vintage-y, that seem new. I put a lot of work into it. So, they were inspired by the fact that I was wearing vintage that seemed right. Not always, because I promise you there are some major clunkers in there that I wear, too. But that's what designers are looking for: What's the next thing, what feels good, what's right now.

"For a while," Eisner continues, "the vintage thing was like my schooling. I learned more than I did in fashion school. I don't even see it as shopping. Shopping -- that word creeps me out. I'm a hunter. Oh well, I'm sure it's the same thing. I'm a shopper. But, I'll tell you, it's very time-consuming, this thing. I mean, it's practically like a full-time job. I mean, I don't do it anymore just because I actually have other interests now."

(Eisner quit working in fashion to become a photographer and start her own press with her partner.)

"But those girls that shop and are in magazines a lot -- that's like a full-time job," she continues. "I semirespect them, because they do spend a lot of time looking good. I mean, that is a lot of work. Going to a Vanity Fair party? It takes, like, two weeks of your life. At some point it's like -- oh my God, do I want to spend the rest of my life doing this? And then you say yes or no. No! I've got things to do!"

Finally, I ask Eisner what she dreamed of becoming while she was growing up. Was it always her ambition to become a muse? Does she have any advice for girls who dream of growing up and becoming a muse?

"I grew up in Cheyenne, Wyo.," Eisner says. "It was like living in Russia. But when you live in a small town you have these dreams, and because you're not exposed to anything, you dream through magazines. I guess young girls are dreaming about all these socialites and muses now. It's funny to think that someone somewhere is saying, 'One day, I'm going to grow up and be a muse!' I have no idea how you would go about doing that."

Alas, nor do I.

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