The revival of Hushidar Mortezaie is here. The Iranian-born designer’s political satire of a techno- and grunge-fueled society, made with his friend and collaborator Michael Sears, became a rebellious response to Mayor Rudy Giulani’s plans for gentrifying New York City neighborhoods at the turn of the millennium.  Michael and Hushi designs gained traction last summer when Bella Hadid wore a dress during the Cannes Film Festival from their autumn/winter 2001-02 collection made from traditional Palestinian scarves called Keffiyeh. Hushidar’s legacy can also be found in Club Santana’s Resort 2021 collection, where in collaboration with designers Omar Braika and Shukri Lawrence of Trashy Clothing, he examined and reclaimed expressions of sexuality among belly dancers.

When I first spoke to Hushidar over email in December 2024, regarding a loan for this exhibition, he recommended his superbug ensemble, originally made for an exhibition at San Francisco’s SOMArts Cultural Center, and later reused for an experimental production at CounterPulse Theater in San Francisco. Hushidar’s ensemble speaks to the hope and promise of a queer Muslim future free from imperialist struggles. His ensemble also speaks to his passion for humanity’s relationship with non-humans and their environments, with the designer currently studying environmental science. When speaking for this interview in January 2025, Hushidar’s neighborhood in the Los Angeles area fell victim to climate catastrophe, causing him to evacuate his home from impending wildfires. While his home ultimately remained unscathed, the event served as a metaphor for his career, specifically his store from 1997 to 2002, which became a site plagued by changing environmental conditions, both for its owner and its neighborhood.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Gillani Peets: One of the first questions I had was do you remember your first interactions with clothes in a store? Did this peak your interest in wanting a career in fashion?

Hushidar Mortezaie: Oh yes. I remember when we left Iran [in 1975] and somehow we landed in England for maybe four or five months, because we had relatives there. As my mom tells me, I used to go under dresses and move the skirts like I was Cinderella because I was obsessed with fairy tales. By the time I got to seven years old, I became obsessed with mannequins because I thought they were real people. I ended up living in California and my joy was going to the mall with my mom on the weekends and looking at clothes. Then there was a show called “Style with Elsa Klensch” on CNN. We had just gotten cable, and I remember seeing Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, and WilliWear. I was hooked. 

Gillani: Can you describe what you were seeing with your mom at these malls that influenced you?

Hushidar: You know it translated from me being into illustrations, books, and early Japanese anime. Gender was in question for me. I wanted to be Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels. I wasn’t wearing those clothes but I would put on my mom’s boots and become a superhero or someone that I saw as glamorous. I would go to Union Square in San Francisco with Neiman Marcus and their elaborate displays, they were portals to my dreams. I was trying to figure out who I was, being an immigrant, through western media’s interpretation of being Iranian and Muslim, and on top of that, my culture doesn’t appreciate LGBT people. I was able to escape those warning signs and create a world where I was accepted, and create a world that was in my dream. 

Gillani: You know, I’m going to say similarly for myself, being born in 1998, was Joan Rivers and “Fashion Police.” I think this can go into my second question. Which is can you describe your first job in fashion as a window dresser, and how that came about in San Francisco?

Hushidar: When I was in high school, I got a job at Crate and Barrel in the mall. First I was doing sales, and then I got transferred to help the window dresser. I graduated in 1990, went to UC Berkeley, and then tried to get into underground clubs. I would just see fashion in the Bay Area San Francisco was happening. I got a job at Wasteland [a vintage clothing store in San Francisco which opened in 1985]. It was like the premier vintage boutique, and Haight Street was an incredible place. My whole life was based on fantasy, the love of stories and fairy tales and superheroes telling stories and building worlds. Because I was gay, Muslim, and Iranian, I had to create my own world of joy where I could be happy and dream. The window was a closed box to create this mood of what’s happening. I grew up in a family where my mother wasn’t a designer, but she was an Iranian woman who loved clothing. Other ladies would ask where she bought her clothing, and she would say JCPenney. Window dressing is how I learned fashion, which led to me being an installation artist.

Gillani: Did you get any other work in San Francisco, or were you primarily located at these two stores?

Hushidar: Well, I left Crate and Barrel after high school, and started Wasteland while I was going to UC Berkeley. At the same time I met my best friend Michael Sears, and there was a huge underground club kid movement that was happening. We would go and make these costumes. It went from dreaming about it as a child to putting it in a window display, then putting it on ourselves and becoming these characters with different themes. It was the same thing that was shown in “Paris is Burning” in New York about showing up in your costume and being the best, the latest, coolest, freshest, and hottest. I mean, that was really my job per se since I got paid by nightclubs in San Francisco. Me and Michael were flown to New York for a style summit during Michael Alig club kid time. Then we said we have to move here. We both got hired by Patricia Field

Gillani: Can I ask what made you want to go to Patricia Field?

Hushidar: I transferred from UC Berkeley to go to FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology]. I come from a very traditional family where education is everything, Michael Sears was not. He wanted to go to New York. He already had in his head that ‘I'm going to eventually have a store’. We were like, sisters, brothers, whatever you want to say, that was my chosen family. We went to her store, when we had visited for the style summit the year before, and we knew that Pat Fields was where all the freaks were. She was the first one who had Westwood and Mugler, and all the club kids worked there. It had just started becoming more techno, and that was kind of our style, this techno pop. Michael wanted a job. He brought the portfolio. He got hired. I went there because I left my parents and so I only would have enough money to pay half of my rent for a studio apartment, and so I needed to live. I was starving, and I was going to school, and so I just went for a job, and then I did a display. She brought me upstairs and hired me. At the time, her store was on Eighth Street, and then I became a buyer. I did all her Japanese buying, and she opened Hotel Venus because of my buying.

Gillani: When you were buying, what were the main assignments that Pat was giving you? What were the main items that she was looking for?

Hushidar: Well, it wasn’t even like that. It was more like, what do you got? Pat would say, ‘All right, you look cute, but what do you got?’ I was like, well, I want to bring all this Japanese kitsch. It started with Hello Kitty, and I was like, I want to bring Sailor Moon. Anime but fashion. She’s like, ‘what.’ I went to Chinatown, would spend my own money and I'd bring it, I get a payout, and I'd mark it up, and it would sell out. It was totally the look, this was baby tee time. Then she saw that, and there was a trip, like a prize to be able to go on this trip to Japan. Japan was happening, and they worshipped her. At the time, I had this white Romulan blonde hairdo. I had spent $1,200 for contacts that were like giant blue with white stars like Sailor Moon. I went to Japan dressed like a cartoon character, but that was fashion at the time. Old ladies that were into Barneys were buying this baby look from Pat and it became a business. I would go to the wholesale district in Japan, and I would buy every cute accessory. Then we started talking to Hysteric Glamor to bring their clothing line, and I helped bring Hysteric Glamor for the first time in any store to Pat's store. Japanese pop was my thing at the time. It wasn't like, she said, go buy this. It was more like, I want this. I went to Japan about six, six or seven times as a buyer for Pat.

Gillani: I can see this as a possible direction for you opening your store. But before we get into that, was Pat influential? Was there even a conversation between the two of you about having your own store?

Hushidar: No, no, no. There was nothing like that. Me and Michael started making these clothes and putting them in a store called Sears and Robot. Michael was the menswear buyer, he left, and he started working on our collections. I would do these drawings, we print them on T shirts, and they would sell out. Then we started printing different little motifs and themes and collections that were of the moment. Then Japanese stores that were friends with her would order a little bit. It became this thing where, like, it started taking off on its own. As soon as she opened Hotel Venus, which was in Soho, I knew that Mike wanted to get a store, and so we just went. We saved whatever little money we had, and we opened this little store on Seventh Street between first and then that's when I had to give my notice. I didn't need to go to FIT because Pat was my mentor for so many things. I was traveling with her to Germany, Portobello Road, and talking to her and living fashion. She allowed me to express my creativity through fashion, through buying. And that's what I learned from her. If I made her a million dollars, I could do this shit, you know, but I was not good with business or money. She was, she’s a legend.

Gillani: When looking for a store, did Michael already have several locations planned?

Hushidar: [laughs] We were so not like that. We just tried to find something that was affordable in an area. It was not premeditated. It was so not like Gen Z or millennial, where they're really sharp. We were Gen X. We just did it. Michael was a brilliant person. We found this space in the East Village, it was between first and eight. It was still kind of cracky. It was still a kind of heroin attic below Avenue A but on that street there was like Resurrection, the famous vintage boutique. The East Village was happening as this kind of edgy little place, and so that's where we found this tiny shoe box store. Michael got help to put down, like stainless steel floors and make the store whole. It was just a little box that was silver. That's how we just came about the store, because it was affordable and the location was right. The East Village was still sketchy, but the gentrification was starting to happen.

Gillani: Can you just describe, actually, the first months of you owning a store and not reporting to anybody, and just relying on you and Michael?

Hushidar: We made no money for a long time. It was slim pickings, but then word of mouth spread because of New York Magazine and this fabulous lady. She’s older, very chic. I can't remember her name right now, but she had this, she had these pics.

Gillani: Is her name, Corky Pollan? 

Hushidar: Yes, thank you. I'm having a senior moment. 

Gillani: [laughs] That’s okay.

Hushidar: She came by and she was like, oh, and she realized that I was the buyer that started all this Japanese pop with Pat in her store. We had a little clothing line that was, like, we didn't have that much in the store, but I had all we bought, like, little Japanese pop things, and we made stuff, and we tried to fill it in the store with art. It was called Sears and Robot, which was a pun on conglomerates. My middle name was legally robot. So it was kind of a ridiculing of, like, because we were this tiny little do it yourself store, ridiculing the mass market. It was that time you would cut up capitalism and make it your own. We had a little bit of a better Christmas, but it was rough for us. It was slim pickings for a while. We were living together, so me and Mike, we moved into our best friend Sue, who was in [House of] Extravaganza. She had a studio apartment in Gramercy Park but it was a studio apartment, so the three of us. This is probably the best time I ever had in my life, with the three of us living in this apartment, with two cats and two industrial sewing machines, and we just survived. This was my chosen family. Me and Michael made stuff, and I'd go to the store, and he'd be in the sewing office, and I would deal with people, and then I would make T-shirts and I would get accessories. And it was very liberating. It was also very scary, because you're dealing with landlords in New York, and that is scary. 

Gillani: Yeah, I truly understand the landlords and making payments on time, every single time.

Hushidar: [laughs] Yeah, it was a nightmare. I still have nightmares about when we were late before the rent. But it was magical, because back then, it was about little boutiques and stores. There was no social media, there were no web shops, there was reality. 

Gillani: How did your store provide club kids or people going to clubs with a queer, rave sense and framework?

Hushidar: It took us time to go from this rave, queer, androgynous Japanese kind of future pop look, then everybody got into it. It became like, then it affected everywhere where it was all action sports and like, you know. Hello Kitty on a T-shirt, and baby tees pastel and looking like a kid and looking like a skateboarder and grunge and all of that that became mainstream. The club scene was starting to get dirtier. Michael Alig got arrested and then all of it shut down. It got dark and heroin. And then I remember Trainspotting came in the movies. Me and Mike wanted to do something that was, like, it got more dirty, like vintagey, like grimy East Village. I started looking at what was going on in the city, Giuliani was closing down 42nd Street. We got all the porn, and we collaged the porn, so that we could have this porno collection. 

Gillani: Did you find that your store was one of the noticeable places as a site of resistance against Giuliani's gentrification of Manhattan?

Hushidar: Oh yeah, because we were selling porn that was printed on clothing that we got from all the stores that he was trying to shut down. I mean we were anti-gentrification. But in essence, here's the thing, being super cool and queer and charting new territories is very gentrification. It's always so, it's like a double edged sword, you know, because by the time that we left the place started becoming gentrified. Then when I came back, maybe 10 years, in 2007 after I had left in 2004/2005 to go to Iran, and I came back to a New York that was NYU, and it was like frat houses, the East Village was dead. 

Gillani: Was there any, I don't know if this is possible, but were there any police sightings or any surveillance that you found when selling this porn that was on T-shirts?

Hushidar: No, not at all. It was so busy with all the crime and stuff like that, I wish it was that glamorous! The only thing that I could say was that Sears found out that this store that was in all these little magazines, this tiny shoe box store that had no money, they sent us a cease and desist letter. So then we were like, okay, it's time to be a little bit more grown up and become Michael and Hushi instead of Sears and Robot. At the time all these it girls of Manhattan, like Chloë Sevigny, or girls in college at Bard, Sarah Lawrence, they were shopping at our store. Women's Wear Daily would constantly come in. We got this cache for being the place to get your little look, and it was queer. 

Gillani: Then let me just, let me just ask. Because of being known as the trendy “It” brand of New York City, would you say this played a part in being included in Fight Club and Sex in the City? Can you also explain how Pat helped you in your first years of operations?

Hushidar: Well, it took time for us to have the right stuff. l just backtrack one second and go to where you talked about being known as the IT brand. We were very underground. Me and Michael were never known as the IT store. We were known as the secret of all the cute people to go and get their ideas from that the whole world didn't know. We were always the best kept secret, until Women's Wear Daily kept coming and writing about us, and so Fight Club happened because we were printing the porn, and me and Michael were just concerned about selling like we would do wholesale, and we would. I would print myself with a xerox machine because no fabric company was allowed to print the porn, because it was illegal by the SEC [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] – which we're going back to basically right now. There was this store in LA and Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee would keep coming to that shore and buying. We would do this mesh and race cars. She bought all these clothes, and her friend was the costume designer for Fight Club. Which I have to embarrassedly tell you, I still haven’t watched. Michael Kaplan, right? Who never gave us credit, and we had to fight. Paper Magazine printed that this was made by Michael Sears and Hushi.

Gillani: Wait, I just want to know because I'm looking at his design illustration, and you're telling me that he didn't give you credit for just basically coming up to the design itself?

Hushidar: Basically at the time there was a little showroom by this girl named Kaylin, a lovely girl, called Showroom 26. She was the one that was getting little boutique orders for us, right as well as ourselves. The costume designer, through Kamala Anderson and Tommy Lee wearing it, asked ‘where can I get these clothes’? They contacted the showroom that had our little collection, and they contacted us. So we worked with Michael Kaplan. We made a whole series of tops for them, exactly this tank top. And then he came back to us and was like ‘I want to have it a different cut. Will you just print the fabric?’ I hand printed all this fabric for them, and then we custom made tops for Brad Pitt. We made all this and they sewed this particular pattern of the top that was a lower V when we had already done it. It was our design, our collection. We changed everything with stars. We cut everything up super punk rock, looking right and so there was an article when Fight Club was coming out that was interviewing Michael Kaplan that says that he got that fabric from a textile company, and that's all he said. He didn't say that we did. A costume designer pretends like they design. I worked with Pat but she's realness. She never says, I design that. She said I worked with designers and put the look together. He didn't give us credit, he did take credit, but you know, it's how it was. 

Gillani: Can you describe a little bit the relationship of Patricia Field and how she incorporated you and Michael into Sex and The City?

Hushidar: We had our designs, our dreams were coming true. Michael was getting better at tailoring. I was getting better at textile. And we were making dresses and ruffled things and tops. And it was selling. We were selling in Japan. We were getting more comfortable. We were able to experiment. We were able to make really cool shit for our store, and it was getting more press, and I would have to handle all the press. It was just constant. Then I started hiring these little IT girls, and like, I was going and getting all this jewelry, and then I was, like, doing textile design, and I was helping. I think we had help with a sewing factory in Chinatown once. Lori Goldstein was the Steven Meisel head at the time she was, she it was like, every week, it was like, and then there'd be like, Italian Vogue, with all this jewelry and headpieces. And then it started getting beyond like Sex and The City. Because Sex and the City is like that now, but back then it was fashion people, like, really high fashion people, to be honest with you, looked at the show as the death of downtown.

Gillani: Wait, pause. Can you describe how that was the death of downtown?

Hushidar: When you look at it now, it's not, it's the way that it made it popular. For those snooty fashion types who visited every day, they didn't think about surviving and making money and living as an artist. They thought about you as not being cool anymore, or like it being too trendy, or masses. And in some ways there's truth and there's falseness to both that it became branded, and then it became mainstream, and now it's gentrified. But, it was a way for us to get our clothes seen, and it was a great show.

Gillani: I think we can get into the year 2000 and when you traveled to Iran for the first time. What was the shift of the store after visiting your home country? Was there a shift in design?

Hushidar: The shift in the store was because I was an artist, and me and Michael were fashion, and we moved on to the next look, which was a mistake sometimes because if you want to make money, if someone gets to know you for what you're doing, you know, you keep doing that. I was dumping this trashy Americana look and I wanted this glamorous Muslim Iranian princess. The ornateness of this culture spoke to me and helped me rediscover my roots. I was also reacting to the media portrayals of how people from the Middle East are just war-torn or terrorists or oppressed. When I went to Iran it was a huge transformation, because I saw the beauty, I saw the incredibleness of the culture, the warmth. I rediscovered something in myself, and then I expressed it through that, and as I expressed and that was like, all the cards aligned to where, like this was happening to where we were getting more cache in our store, and people were looking at us. And then we decided to have our first show, and it was all based on this trip back home, like as a love letter to the Middle East.

GP: We can get into your fashion week debut. Was this considered your first show, when you presented in February 2001? How did it come about?

HM: We were fearless because we were very young. We had heard that other people were kind of getting on this Middle Eastern bandwagon. When I got back in early November till February, we worked like dogs and didn't sleep, and he made all the shoes too, and it was a whole look. We rented a studio space, which was like a loft in Delancey Street off of the Lower East Side. We didn’t have money for chairs. Michael went with my friend Brian, and bought all these prayer rugs, and people had to sit on the floor. We had so much press of being this little underground secret IT store, that we were able to get those models for free from agencies. I didn't think anyone was gonna come. But we gave the invitations to Women's Wear Daily, W and we just emailed whoever we could because of the weird lack of emailing that was available at the time. Somehow 150 people showed up. These editors sat on the floor and watched these Persian Muslim princesses storm by breaking every code. That show was a huge success, then John Galliano’s 2001 Dior Fall Couture happened and he took the whole thing. That was a huge compliment, because his amazing assistant who died was always in the store. Our collection was everywhere, and then of course, it became 9/11. 

GP: I think we can talk about 9/11 by first detailing Zeina Durra’s unpublished short documentary Muslin. What was the initiative for Zeina to decide she wanted to make a documentary about this designer?

HM: Zeina is Palestinian. So when she sees this Palestinian gown, no one's done that and given props to being Middle Eastern, or it's Palestinian fabric because it was unheard of. She was a young filmmaker, and she wanted to make a film, but she also wanted to document this experience after 9/11 because basically it was like the manufacturing of racism as a very okay thing against Middle Eastern people in the United States. Our second show, Roses from the Gutter, was canceled because our show was Friday. 9/11 was Tuesday. I remember waking up in that studio apartment because Michael's sister called and said, turn on the TV. It was like 9am and we were so exhausted because we were preparing all the stuff for the show, still working like a dog, and I’m seeing the person fall from the sky, I'm like, ‘Oh my God.’ Then my heart dropped, because I knew I was just going to be called a terrorist, which is a horrible thing. 

GP: How did customers react to your store after this event, were you even fearful of being in the store?  

HM: I was fearful of being in the store. We had to close the store because our store was below 14th Street, and all of below 14th Street was closed for at least a month. It was such a devastating thing that no one wanted to do business, and for my safety, we had to keep the store closed. We would have appointments, but we had to keep the store closed. As the store closed Bidoun Magazine, which was very brand new, their editor [Lisa Farjam], and she wanted to see everything she wanted to, and she started working with me. The Middle Eastern kids came together, but we had to stay close. It got to a point where Diane von Furstenberg is making American flag dresses and there's nothing wrong with that. But I didn't want to do that, because I was not backing down. 

GP: Was operations done differently after the attacks. Was Michael the front face of the store or was operations the same before the attacks?

HM: We still had the girls that work there but we couldn't keep those girls working there anymore. We didn't have enough money because there was no business, and it was a little scary for us, especially me, being in that store. Even more high fashion people came to our studio, and more art magazines, because then it became like it became prophetic. The porn reflected Giuliani's gentrification. Everyone has a new prejudice, and Muslim women are being attacked on the subway, and I'm standing next to them angry.

GP: The show that was originally planned for September, was done next month. Did you see a difference between how the February show was treated compared to the October show?

HM: Yeah barely anyone covered the second show. The thing is that there was a lot of decent people that were working in high fashion at the time like and they wanted to keep us going and also it became more poignant, because here we were a textbook case of what happens as an effect of this great tragedy and how it affects someone from that country with someone from this country. That show happened at the Ukrainian National Home. There were like, about six or ten young designers that decided that this specific week in October would be when we would show. It was about the same amount of people as the first show. The editors walked in right as we started the show, and it was all the Women's Wear Daily editors and they were like this is the best collection because they’re wearable, beautiful clothes. It was a bleak time, New York did not recover from that for a long time. It wasn’t just about me being Middle Eastern, it was about me and Michael being young business owners struck in the middle.  

GP: Basically let’s enter into 2002, seeing the gentrification of Manhattan you made a comment in Paper Magazine that prices are going up and we're leaving. What was the back and forth discussion with your landlord at the time?

HM: I remember we said we have to vacate. I don't think it was that complicated. I think we might have not paid for two months because we had a security deposit and this place was spotless. We didn't know. We made it look way better than it was,And, you know, I had, my brother was a lawyer, even though he was in California. We were just like, we have to vacate the premises. And we did. And so we were paying rent in a studio like one of our friends had an apartment on Fifth Street between first and second. Under his apartment, there was this weird basement dungeon that had this walk-down, and that became where we sewed. That's where all the clothes, the runway clothes were, and that's where stylists would come. We went from being a store like that into doing wholesale and having press, but it took us a while to recover from all that. 

GP: You also said in Paper Magazine that when closing up your store, you planned to open another one.

HM: And we didn’t. [laughs] And we didn’t, girl, simple as that.

GP: We’re jumping into 2003. Actually, let’s get into 2004 when you decided Michael and Hushi was done.

HM: We were the underdogs always. We did our Icon Collection show in 2003, the problem was we didn’t have the money to have orders made. For every order I had to handpaint the silk. When the Italian Vogue with Linda Evalingsta came out, I couldn’t afford the $15 dollars, I had to wait a couple days to get the magazine. The history of that piece is when I first met Michael, he was androgynous. He made this outfit for me for this New Years party in San Francisco and he shows up in this Ronald McDonald outfit and his face looks like Linda. All these years later, we put this Ronald McDonald outfit on Linda was a big thing for him and it’s closure in a way. We were working with this PR company, they would put on all shows, get funding, get the models dressed, and then they would do the press. It never was the same as when we had our little store and did it ourselves. They forced us to have a show and it was our most acclaimed show.  

GP: Can you just discuss Michael and Hushi’s last collection, Illusions of Grandeur?

HM: Illusions of Grandeur Fall 2003 was basically the idea of Las Vegas, glitz and showgirls but this moody vibe where we took patterns of jackets upside down. Editors were saying someone needs to back these two. We still couldn’t get backing, it was impossible for us to make all these clothes, and it just started to be this ticking time bomb. Our PR company had to have a show, and we decided we’re just going to “Paris is Burning”. That’s another play of artists making something out of nothing. Our invite for Illusions of Grandeur was me and Michael dressed as Siegfried & Roy. We were magicians making something out of nothing again. It got to the point in 2004 where we said we can’t do this anymore, and it was devastating. I remember seeing pictures of the show and it was so glamorous. Michael was crying and I was crying, and we had to give that up. Not only Middle Eastern people are considered monsters, or gay people, whatever you want to say, fashion is filled with monsters. We had to say ciao. That’s when we had to leave New York. 

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Hushidar Mortezaie outside Michael and Hushi in New York’s East Village wearing a Googoosh Headband.

Summer 2000.

Photograph Courtesy of Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies, San Francisco State University.