Art Of The Deal: Bon Business

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By 1991 Azria was looking for a design partner. A mutual friend sent Azria's way a Ukrainian-born former ballerina who had attended Los Angeles' Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and had worked for several small designers but was considering leaving fashion for her other passion, art. Her name was Lubov. "In the interview he asked me one question: Are you global, or are you detail oriented?" she says. "I said, 'The latter.' And he said, 'Great, you're hired because I'm global.'" Soon Azria asked Lubov another question. "He asked me to marry him after a shopping trip to Rodeo to do market research," she says. "He pulled into my driveway, looked at me and said, 'Would you sleep with me?' I said no. Then he said, 'Would you marry me?' I said maybe. Obviously on Monday I went in to resign. But Max apologized. Then I went to his house and saw him sitting with his daughters on his lap, hugging them so gently, and I thought to myself, If that man could love me half as much as he loves his children, I would be the happiest woman in the world."

They wed in 1992, the same year they opened their first boutique, in Los Angeles. "After I got engaged, I changed my mind about fashion," says Lubov, 38, now creative director for BCBG Max Azria, Max Azria and Max Azria Atelier, "as long as Max understood my needs as a designer." It's not surprising to hear Azria call Lubov his muse, whereas she speaks with a bit more nuance. "Max creates the vision, and I make sure it's executed," she says. "We're a great team as long as his office is on the other end of the building. There are days when we don't agree." Lubov is hailed as the prototypical BCBG woman: wife, mother (she and Azria have three daughters, and she is stepmom to his three children from a previous marriage) and career woman, who, according to the company bio, "successfully balances life's demands with enviable grace, refusing to compromise on her fulfillment of each role." She speaks Russian, English and a bit of Spanish, takes salsa classes and has a thing for foreign films.

Sometimes, says Lubov, she just walks into a BCBG store, takes a seat and watches customers go in and out. She also gets weekly feedback from sales associates and managers. "You don't always have to be right, but you have to be focused on the customers' needs. We do a lot of marketing research." All of which has produced three "customer profiles": the connoisseur, a sophisticated woman with a discriminating and chic sense of style; the socialite, the enviable élite fluent in the latest must-have culture; and the visionary, an original and unprecedented trendsetter with inspirational expressions of fashion. Connoisseurs make up about 50% of BCBG's clientele, whereas visionaries are a "very little" slice of the pie and socialites fall somewhere in between. "Customers shop by taste level, not by whatever's hot," says Lubov. "We're training sales associates to pin customers and call them when something new comes in." It's a uniquely personal approach for a company with as many stores as BCBG. "We think of ourselves as a boutique, not a chain," she says.