Max’s Maxims
Like so many great notions, the idea that made Max Azria one of the biggest apparel barons in the world is deceptively simple. He decided to make designer clothes available to a large audience by keeping prices reasonable. If charging less than four figures for a designer dress wasn’t radical enough, then his contention that a global fashion empire could be commandeered by Los Angeles bordered on the lunatic.
“When I said I would build a house of fashion in L.A., people thought I was crazy,” Azria says. “If you want to create a house of fashion, everyone told me, you go to New York. But for five years I’ve been saying that American designers would be the No. 1 designers in the world. Today, that has come true. You see Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford at Gucci and other Americans driving big, international companies.
“It means that crazy Max wasn’t so wrong,” he says. “I also said California would become the capital of the world of fashion, and everyone laughed. But today, people look at Los Angeles completely differently than they used to. They see that there is real creativity in this city.”
To be precise, there is creativity evident in Vernon, headquarters of BCBG, the $300-million clothing and accessory company that Azria founded nine years ago. Expansion has been so rapid that interior decoration hasn’t been a priority at the sterile, sprawling building where 450 of BCBG’s 1,200 employees work.
In a spare, white office where the only frills are an espresso maker and some family photographs, the 49-year-old owner and head designer sits in a white-slipcovered chair, lights a Marlboro, sips a Classic Coke from the can and discusses his goals, his history and the art and business of fashion.
He speaks English without hesitation in a husky French accent. A high school dropout born in Tunisia and raised in Paris, Azria has much in common with the first generation of Hollywood moguls, brash immigrants who wrote their own rule books by following their instincts. They made fortunes putting fantasies on film. He crafted his dreams with fabric.
Breaking the Mold
of Department Stores
*
As smack-your-head obvious as Azria’s concept of democratizing high style might seem, the way women’s clothes have traditionally been sold worked against it. Department stores group clothing lines by price, a system that only makes sense some of the time. Expensive designer clothes are displayed in one area, less costly “contemporary” lines--as they’re designated in the industry--are confined to their own ghettos. Even if a contemporary manufacturer presents an intricately cut, hand-embroidered silk skirt for $200, there’s no chance it could move up into the designer neighborhood (which might well be offering $400 white cotton T-shirts and $800 plain black slacks).
Azria sidestepped this segregation by operating his own stores. Like the Hollywood studios in their formative years, he gained creative muscle by controlling the channel of distribution. Aside from the financial benefit of eliminating the middleman, having BCBG stores allowed complete power over the company’s image as well as direct communication with customers.
With a team of BCBG architectural designers and visual display experts, Azria could create an atmosphere in his stores to rival the elegance of designer boutiques. He didn’t have to hope that a department store buyer would like the more adventurous styles in his line; BCBG stores stocked the show-stoppers of every collection. Salespeople could be schooled in fashionese, trained to explain the proper fit of slouchy trousers or to clue a shopper in on how supermodel Bridget Hall put a certain suit together in BCBG’s runway show earlier this week.
So why was Max Azria able to open 61 BCBG stores in North America, eight more in Asia and South America, absorb the three divisions acquired when a competitor was purchased in 1996, establish units for shoes, handbags, swimwear and men’s clothes and, two months ago, buy the French fashion house of Herve Leger? Because he’s the smartest man in fashion? Probably not. But he might be the most stubborn. An “if we build it, they will come” determination steadily guided this pilgrim’s progress.
“Most people think fashion is a risky business, but I don’t believe that,” he says. ‘Sometimes it’s riskier not to take a risk. If you don’t take a position and stand up for what you believe in, you will fail. If you take an idea and make it happen, then you will be successful.”
Discovering a Wife
and Business Partner
*
Three years ago, Azria’s wife, Lubov, tacked small drawings of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” to the door of Max’s suite of offices. Azria doesn’t look beastly, more closely resembling a dynamic Cheshire cat, but considering her Ingrid Bergmanesque beauty, the characterization of the couple as Belle and her tender monster is understandable.
“Lubov” (pronounced LOO-bah) means love in Russian. Eighteen years younger than her husband, Lubov came to America with her parents from the Ukraine when she was 12. Her title is design director. To the extent that BCBG is a mom-and-pop shop grown large, she fills the role of the company’s adored mother.
After graduating from Fairfax High School in 1985, she studied design at Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, working for a succession of manufacturers at night to pay off student loans. As a fledgling designer, she made sure she saw what new styles were in the stores. While shopping on Sunset Plaza, a shop manager approached her and asked her what she did.
She recalls, “I was blond then, and I kept on getting recruited by clothing companies because of the way I looked. I had a good sense of fashion, and I’m sure the way I put myself together was part of it. But when that guy said he knew someone who wanted to hire a designer I thought, ‘Oh, no. Not another one of those guys who’s not really interested in what he says he’s interested in.’ ”
She met Max, and after one conversation, he hired her for his 2-year-old company.
His family had also left their home country, when he was 12, moving to Paris, where his father was in the olive oil business. Max’s interest in fashion surfaced when he was 16. He sold accessories to boutiques, then began importing from Hong Kong and eventually designed and manufactured his own line. In the early ‘70s, he bought denim from America, made jeans in France, then sold them back to the States just as the market for European and designer jeans was taking off.
He was drawn to Los Angeles by the quality of the light, which reminded him of his native Tunisia. When he came here in 1983, he was exhausted.
“I’d been a manufacturer for 14 years, always traveling and working very hard,” he says. “I had three children, and I wanted a more relaxed lifestyle and a job that would let me stay in one place. I made the decision to become a retailer.”
During the next few years, he opened 14 Jess stores in California, importing sportswear from France. Currency changes adversely affected the business in the late ‘80s.
“Importing became a terrible business,” he says. “I closed the stores, one at a time, and it took three years to do it. I didn’t choose the easy way out by going bankrupt. The hard way is to pay everyone and not jeopardize my reputation. I believed I would be big again tomorrow, and today I feel that I made the right decision. Because at the level where I am and the level where I’m going, my past is very important. I reacted honorably, and I’m proud of that because it was very tough.”
Putting Together
Years of Experience
*
BCBG stands for bon chic, bon genre, a French expression meaning good style, good attitude. Founding the company in 1989 gave Azria the opportunity to synthesize everything he’d learned.
“There’s probably someone who’s a better designer than me, or better in retailing or manufacturing,” he says. “But I have the total experience. Now I look back and wonder how I could have been a manufacturer all those years without the knowledge of what it is to be a retailer. How could I design a collection without being a retailer who can see how the clothes fit and how women react?”
Although Azria’s plan was to make BCBG a fashion powerhouse, he knew that he’d have to start slowly. Designing a line was one thing. Having the money to manufacture and ship a collection was more than he could manage at the beginning. So he created items that would sell. The first was a baby-doll dress. The profits from that were reinvested in the company, and the next cash magnet took the form of stirrup pants. They were made in 32 colors, and customers snapped up 100,000 pairs. After two years in business, Max had amassed enough capital to launch a collection.
As if on cue, Lubov arrived. Max speaks of his wife in hushed tones, in the way one would discuss a sacred gift.
“It’s the luckiest day of life, when I met my wife,” he whispers.
She had been working for him for a month when she asked him to go on a professional shopping trip with her. Her goal was to point out what their competitors were and, more important, weren’t doing.
“All I wanted then was an elegant two-button jacket,” she says. “The only one who made it was Donna Karan, and the only way I could buy it was to go to Loehmann’s. I told Max that it was impossible that the only great jacket out there cost $800. I knew that if you could make simple, beautiful clothes that weren’t so expensive you would dress women who weren’t finding what they wanted.”
The shopping excursion segued into dinner, and the business conversation turned more personal. Lubov was then under the spell of motivational guru Tony Robbins.
“That first evening I was telling Max about that, that I believed that everything that happens is for the best. I was so positive, and I think he liked that.”
Lubov had left her car at Max’s house. When they returned from dinner, he opened the door of her car and asked, “Can you spend the night?”
“No,” she replied.
“Then would you marry me?”
“That is the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Good night.”
A year later, they were married. Max’s children from his first marriage, then 18, 11 and 8, lived with them. Lubov gave birth to three daughters, now ages 5, 2 and 1. Every Friday night, the family gathers at home for Shabbat dinner. Max might bring a friend home from work to join them, and so many pals of his teenage daughters surround the table that almost any stylish girl who wandered in off the Beverly Hills street and knew the traditional blessings of the Jewish Sabbath might go unnoticed.
Amid the guests, the important players are recognized; at the sight of her 24-year-old brother, who no longer lives at home, the baby puckers up for one of the high-octane kisses that are the family’s standard.
Dinner begins at 8 o’clock Max time, an inexact Mediterranean postponement of 30 to 45 minutes past the stated hour. The house is large and beautiful, steeped in the chaos well-known to any home in which children and toys rule.
Dinner conversation is as likely to be about politics as fashion, and the older children aggressively share their opinions. Just before a debate on which shoes are cooler, Gucci or Prada, is interrupted by an unrehearsed comedy routine about 17-year-old Joyce’s adventures in wood shop class, her 14-year-old sister settles the argument by declaring BCBG shoes her favorite.
“Max and Lubov really compliment each other,” says Karine Siccardi, BCBG executive vice president, who began as Max’s assistant when the company had only four employees. “He’s the one to decide where the brand is going, which image to project, where we should be opening stores next. She’s the one to make sure that every design is perfect and the clothes fit.”
From Interloper
to Fashion Favorite
*
The BCBG spring 1999 runway show Monday evening was their sixth as part of New York’s biannual fashion week. For anyone who knows BCBG’s history, what was most remarkable about it was how unremarkable it was. That is to say, it was just another important, $250,000 fashion show. The best models were brilliantly made up and coiffed. The clothes were beautiful, perfectly expressing the current focus on luxurious materials and precious detail. Before the show, Max was besieged backstage by interviewers and video cameras that record fodder for scores of pithy fashion sound bites.
The crowd of 1,100 included high-profile store buyers, fashion editors, photographers, stylists and celebrities. Los Angeles-based stylist Phillip Bloch, with actress Lauren Holly in tow, said, “Lauren, Sandy Bullock, Kristen Johnson--all my girls love BCBG. It isn’t so fashiony that you walk around feeling like a freak, but they’re still giving you that fashion edge.”
Less than three years ago, when BCBG and other midpriced California manufacturers first showed in New York, their arrival was met with a reaction more appropriate for a band of infidels sullying a temple of style. Esprit, based in San Francisco, had penetrated the market in the mid-1980s much the way BCBG is today, by running its own stores throughout the world and advertising widely. But they were producing kicky clothes for young teenagers. They didn’t stage fashion shows beside New York’s haughtiest. And they didn’t call themselves designers, as BCBG boldly did.
On the road to respect, the most persistent criticism BCBG has fought is that it is derivative. The perception is that big manufacturers, especially Californians, are trend followers and interpreters, not style setters.
Azria says, “I work for the consumer. If there’s a trend that the customer wants, I believe I should give it to them. But we don’t knock off.”
Although BCBG’s styling and quality have steadily improved since its first New York show, the company’s changing structure is partially responsible for allowing BCBG to evolve into a true designer line. Former competitor Parallel, purchased two years ago and newly expanded into To The Max, a junior line headed by Max’s brother Serge, are perfectly positioned to deliver whatever’s hot. While To The Max is selling new variations of cargo pants to high school girls, BCBG can be the fashion vanguard, offering exquisitely finished silk burlap trousers to sophisticates.
Bloomingdale’s senior vice president for fashion direction, Kal Ruttenstein, says, “BCBG is on the international style wavelength, and they’ve gotten more innovative in the last year and a half. The quality is excellent for the price. Max is very clever. He knows all facets of the industry, and he drives himself and everyone around him. He drives the stores to be their best. His enthusiasm is contagious.”
That enthusiasm will be needed to fuel even more expansion. BCBG plans to open another BCBG shop on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood before Christmas, an Herve Leger boutique on Sunset Plaza by spring, 12 new BCBG stores in the U.S. and seven more internationally in 1999, including outposts in Paris and Milan.
“The goal is to be completely international, in every city, in every country,” vice president Siccardi says. “We’re looking to have diverse products, fragrance, watches, everything you would need from the time you wake up till the end of the day.”
Lubov dreams less of manifest destiny than of excellence in each product. And her standards can sometimes be different from anyone else’s.
“You know how you can tell a successful show?” she asks, after the mint cashmere shells and beaded orchid organza dresses have all been packed away. “The models took all the shoes. That’s a great sign.”
