Max Azria

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Max Azria, 2009, New York City , Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

Max Azria (born January 1, 1949 in Sfax , Tunisia ; died May 6, 2019 in Houston , Texas ) was a Tunisian-American fashion designer and entrepreneur. He was the managing owner of the fashion house BCBG Max Azria and the globally active textile goods group BCBG Max Azria Group (in its own spelling: BCBGMAXAZRIAGROUP). Azria was one of the few personalities who is internationally successful in both professions of the fashion industry.

biography

Max Azria was one of six children of a Sephardic olive oil producer and grew up in Paris . At the age of 16 he got his first knowledge of the fashion business. He began studying classical philology , but then his interests changed and he worked as a designer for women’s fashion for almost eleven years. In 1981 he emigrated to Los Angeles , USA . Azria founded his own fashion house BCBG Max Azria there in 1989 . BCBG is an abbreviation and stands for the ironic phrase "bon chic, bon genre" (for example: "slick and ironed", "posh").

Fashion

The BCBG Max Azria fashion brand is now defined as a “fashionable, innovative, affordable designer women's outerwear concept for the core target group of active, fashionably interested women between 25 and 35”. In addition to its own creations of light and elegant designs, Azria also oriented itself to the successful ideas and trends of leading fashion designers. The bandage dress by the fashion designer Hervé Léger , whom he valued , is a tight-fitting dress that Azria has developed into a symbol of the Hervé Léger fashion brand with colorful patterns and sophisticated cuts . Celebrity customers of the brand are film stars and singers like Kate Bosworth , Victoria Beckham , Alicia Keys and Catherine Zeta-Jones . The fashion brand Max Azria Atelier , founded in 2004, makes costumes worn by prominent US actresses at film galas.

Companies

In August 1998 he expanded overseas for the first time and bought the economically troubled Parisian fashion house Hervé Léger from the conglomerate Seagram .

From 2001, Azria began to diversify its company into many different fashion brands, so that as many different needs as possible can be served from children's fashion to accessories and haute couture . This in turn required flexible organization of the production chain in order to be able to react quickly to changes in customer requirements. Another business strategy is cooperation with large retail companies. In December 2006 he started a cooperation with the French retail group Carrefour , initially with 450 branches in several European countries. He continued his expansion in Europe with the women's clothing brand Manoukian , cooperating with Harvey Nichols in London and in Germany with Breuninger and Peek & Cloppenburg . Azria started a youth fashion line for Wal-Mart in June 2009 with the young star singer Miley Cyrus .

Azria continued to focus on acquiring fashion houses that were experiencing economic difficulties. In addition to the French fashion houses Alain Manoukian and Hervé Leger , this included the takeover of ten branches of the insolvent Belgian fashion chain Donaldson in Germany in 2009. After all, he basically places his prices below the level of the well-known fashion brands.

In 2010, BCBG Max Azria Group , headquartered in Vernon, California, owned around 1200 stores, 500 factories and workshops, and more than 22 fashion brands. In fiscal 2009, his companies made $ 960 million in sales.

At the end of May 2010 he was introduced by the investor Nicolas Berggruen as a partner for the operational business of the insolvent German department store company Karstadt . Azria will ensure “a young appearance and a youthful style”. Berggruen justified his choice for Azria as follows: "BCBG knows the market extremely well and understands a lot about merchandising ." The BCBG Max Azria Group knows its way around "in sales promotion as well as in verticalization, i.e. mastering the value chain from production to the end to the shop counter. ”Even before the committee of creditors was awarded the contract to Berggruen, Azria had agreed with Karstadt that textiles from its womenswear brand Manoukian would be offered in stores from summer 2010.

family

Despite an 18-hour day, he celebrated Shabbat almost every Friday evening with his family and usually a large number of guests . His wife Lubov Azria (* 1968) is a former ballerina from Kiev , Ukraine , who was selected for the youth department of the Bolshoi Ballet . Her family emigrated to the United States and she studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. Since 1991 she has worked for BCBG Max Azria as a designer and later as creative director . They married in 1992 and have three daughters and three children from Azria's first marriage.

Awards

  • 1996: Atlanta Designer of the Year
  • 2000: Otis Fashion Achievement Award from Otis College of Art and Design
  • 2007: Wells Fargo Century Fashion Achievement Award Winner at the LA Fashion Awards .
  • 2008: Fashion Excellence Award at the 33rd Annual Dallas Fashion Awards for successfully transforming Hervé Léger into a fresh, sensual collection.
  • (Other awards:)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Short bio ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , YourNewFragrance.com, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.yournewfragrance.com
  2. ↑ a b c d BCBG MAX AZRIA GROUP Company Details , Women's Wear Daily, 2008
  3. ↑ a b c d e Nadia Mustafa: "Bon Business" ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Time Style & Design, 82, Fall 2006. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bcbgmaxazriagroup.com
  4. ↑ bon chic, bon genre , PONS publishing house
  5. ↑ bon chic, bon genre , LEO
  6. ↑ a b Ulrike Howe, Martina Metzner: "BCBG Max Azria takes over all Donaldson stores"  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , TextilWirtschaft, March 26, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.textilwirtschaft.de  
  7. ↑ a b Constance CR White: "Patterns: Backs Azria Herve Leger" , New York Times , 11 August 1998
  8. ↑ Rebecca Wilcox: "The £ 1,300 Herve Leger dress that's the sexiest ever ... pity you can not breathe in it" , Daily Mail , December 9, 2008
  9. ^ "Hervé Leger: Takeover by the US company BCBG Max Azria" , TextilWirtschaft, August 11, 1998
  10. ↑ Bea Gottschlich: "Carrefour cooperates with BCBG" , TextilWirtschaft, December 8, 2006
  11. ↑ Bea Gottschlich: “Bcbg Max Azria wants to expand in Europe. Above all, the Manoukian branch network is to be expanded ”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , TextilWirtschaft, February 8, 2007@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.textilwirtschaft.de  
  12. ↑ Press release: "Walmart to Launch Miley Cyrus & Max Azria Clothing Line As Walmart Presents the Miley Cyrus Concert Tour" , Wal-Mart , June 3, 2009
  13. ↑ a b Kirsten Bienk: "Karstadt bidder Berggruen chooses BCBG as a fashion partner" ( Memento of the original from June 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Dow Jones Newswires, May 25, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dowjones.de
  14. ↑ David C. Lerch: "An international star designer should spice up department stores" , Tagesspiegel , June 9, 2010
  15. ↑ Christoph Schlautmann: "US designer reaches for Karstadt tour" , Handelsblatt , May 26, 2010
  16. ↑ Alfons Frese: "New Hope for Karstadt" , Tagesspiegel , May 23, 2010
  17. ↑ Brigitte Koch: "Karstadt investor with a collector's gene" , FAZ , May 25, 2010
  18. ↑ a b Ericka Souter, Kathy Ehrich Dowd and Amy Keith: “Red Carpet Ready” ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , People Magazine , September 4, 2006 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bcbgmaxazriagroup.com
  19. ^ A b Lubov Azria Biography , whosdatedwho.com, 2009
  20. ↑ Honorees , LA Fashion Awards, 2007
  21. ↑ 33rd Annual DFA Winners: Fashion Excellence Award ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / dallasmarketcenter.com


personal data
SURNAME Azria, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Tunisian-American fashion designer and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Sfax
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 2019
Place of death Houston