This is what I like about being a designer: You can't really get

“This is what I like about being a designer: You can’t really get it until you see it.” — Isaac Mizrahi

In this simple yet profound declaration, Isaac Mizrahi, the visionary of color and couture, speaks not only of fashion but of the mystery of creation itself. His words illuminate a truth known to artists, thinkers, and dreamers since the dawn of time — that the act of creation is a journey through the unseen, guided not by certainty but by faith. When Mizrahi says, “You can’t really get it until you see it,” he reveals that design — like life — cannot be fully understood in theory. It must be experienced, embodied, made real. Ideas live in shadow until the moment they are brought into light.

For the designer, the process of creation is both chaos and revelation. The mind conceives a vision, faint and trembling, but it is only in the doing — in the drawing of lines, the draping of fabric, the shaping of form — that the vision gains clarity. Mizrahi reminds us that imagination must take flesh before it can be understood. One cannot know the harmony of color until the paint touches the canvas; one cannot feel the soul of a garment until the fabric falls upon the body. Like the sculptor who sees the figure within the marble, the designer must trust what has not yet appeared, working through doubt until beauty reveals itself.

The ancients understood this sacred mystery. When Michelangelo carved the David, he said that the statue already existed within the stone — his task was only to release it. Yet he could not fully “get it” until his chisel met the marble, until the sound of hammer upon rock began to give form to his intuition. Similarly, the builders of cathedrals, the composers of symphonies, the poets of the ages — they all began with uncertainty. Their ideas were not born whole; they emerged through the rhythm of creation. Mizrahi’s insight is timeless: vision is discovered through practice, not before it.

There is a deep humility in these words, for they confess that no one — not even the artist — fully understands what they are making at the beginning. The act of design is not a performance of mastery, but a dialogue with the unknown. The designer stands between inspiration and material, translating whispers of imagination into the language of form. The process is unpredictable, at times maddening, but also miraculous — for from confusion arises clarity, and from trial, transcendence. To “see it” is to behold what once lived only in the mind, made visible by courage and persistence.

We may find a mirror of this truth not only in art but in the story of human progress itself. When Thomas Edison labored to create the electric light, he failed a thousand times. Each attempt revealed something new — a fragment of the truth he sought. He could not “get it” until, at last, the light was born, and darkness was conquered by invention. So it is with every creator, great or humble: understanding follows making, not the other way around. The act of creation is itself a teacher — one must begin without full knowledge, and trust that insight will arrive only after effort.

The lesson is this: do not wait for certainty before you begin. Whether in art, in work, or in life, you will never “get it” until you try, until you step forward into the unknown. The painter must paint, the writer must write, the builder must build. Only through the act does the vision unfold. Do not fear imperfection — for creation is not the perfection of an idea, but the discovery of its truth. To design, to create, to live — these are all acts of faith in the unseen, acts of bringing something from imagination into being.

So remember the teaching of Isaac Mizrahi: that understanding is born of doing, and beauty is revealed through vision made visible. Be bold enough to begin even when the way is unclear. Let your curiosity lead your hands, your passion guide your craft, and your patience shape your outcome. For when at last you “see it” — when what once lived only in your heart stands before you in the light — you will know the joy Mizrahi speaks of: the sacred joy of creation fulfilled, the moment when thought becomes form, and the invisible becomes real.