Peek Inside Isaac Mizrahi's 4,000-Square-Foot N.Y.C. Apartment

On Isaac Mizrahi's nightstand in the master bedroom of his Greenwich Village home of the past 25 years, along with several other books and a crystal-encrusted turtle that he designed, is a copy of Henry VI. The play is generally considered one of Shakespeare's lesser works, and yet the designer is slogging through all three parts, his curiosity stoked after engaging a tutor on the Bard.

"What are you reading?" Mizrahi asks with genuine interest from his perch in the adjacent study, the perfect place for enjoying a good story. As it happens, I have just downloaded Act One, the 1959 autobiography of the playwright Moss Hart, after learning Terrence McNally included it on a list of books he would take with him if he were to be marooned on a desert island.

"The greatest book!" Mizrahi booms. "In. The. World!

"You know, I was friends with Kitty Carlisle," he says of the legendary Broadway doyenne who was Hart's widow. "She had the most unbelievable apartment. In. The. World. It was so un-art directed, so not bourgeois. Just these crazy old rooms filled with antiques, velvet pulls, and crochet, as if she had just moved in and put books on the shelves. We should all live like that! It doesn't hurt to have Gershwin sheet music on the piano, written in his own hand."

RELATED: Isaac Mizrahi's Favorite "Funny" Film? Rosemary's Baby

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For InStyle's Home & Design issue, photographer Dean Kaufman gave us an inside look at the actor's N.Y.C home. Click on the photo above to take a closer look.