If you are like me, and you were old enough in the ’80s to marvel at Isaac Mizrahi the Personality in “Unzipped,” but you were too young to experience Isaac Mizrahi the Designer through the clothes, then you probably figured like I did that you would never get the full Isaac Mizrahi fashion adventure (Target and an exclusive Bergdorf’s line don’t count). Now, all these years later, Isaac is finally, thrillingly, in my style zeitgeist. What happened? During Fashion Week, he sent out a super-fun, smart and idiosyncratic collection that laid to rest doubts about whether the old dog had any new tricks. At the same time, he started appearing, along with friends and models, in the first batch of print ads since he took over the once-mighty, lately-dowdy Liz Claiborne label.

The images are genius in their straight-forward appeal, seeming to say: “We are for all of you — and yet, we have a distinct direction. We understand you are of all ages, colors, shapes and sizes. And you are busy. And our male designer knows all of this because he actually watches you — yep, that’s him, clad in black and shades — because he really, truly wants to know exactly what you want.” And then he delivers a better, cheekier version of it. So, in effect, Mizrahi has gifted the ladies a double, putting two labels — one high, one in between (and thankfully no stupid, wasteful low) — on the fashion radars of women who never dreamed they’d get or be interested in either. Is Isaac Mizrahi the man of These Times, or what?

Ever since reading Anna Wintour’s Editor’s Letter in the March issue of Vogue, I had been planning to write a post of high praise. For even my admirably green-obsessed cousin was generally positive when Bangs wrote:

“When people stop shopping, other people lose their jobs. So there is no moral high ground to be gained by abstaining from felicity. That said, shopping differently is a wise response to the current landscape. It’s a perfect moment to dwell on value and values: how garments are made, where they are made, and why thy cost what they cost. A Fendi python bag in a classic shape made in Italy? The high price tag makes sense. An organic seersucker suit from a company based in upstate New York? Worth every penny.”

So, if shopping in a mindful manner can be charitable, it sounds like a win-win for everybody, right? I thought so too. Then I read David Kamp’s amazing and enlightening “Rethinking the American Dream” in the current Vanity Fair. Presenting a fascinating history, Kamp shows how the dream devolved from something boldly idealistic — freedom and possibility — and modestly material — two-bedroom homes, road-trip vacations —  into a nightmare in which everyone aspires to live “the way people do on ‘MTV Cribs.’”

That’s not even the heart-stopping part. Citing the journalist Gregg Easterbrook, Kamp says that as more Americans achieve the earlier definition of the American Dream, ever more consider themselves unhappy (and incapable of achieving the “Cribs”-based definition of the Dream). In other words, more stuff = more dissatisfaction. It seems that while shopping might save jobs, as Anna Wintour points out, it may only be a short-term fix — like retail therapy — and the real key lies in not only reshaping our priorities but also how we are employed. Just imagine a world in which the energy previously devoted to marketing brand awareness is retrained on, say, saving the world. Which is not to say that we don’t need some super-talented designers to stick it out so we can all look fabulous too. What is a just planet, after all, without eye candy?