Lubov and Max Azria
"I didn't want to launch until I truly understood the whole idea. A bandage dress isn't a woven, it's all knitted on a knitting machine and is a completely different concept," Azria explained. "People assume it's cut-and-sew, but there's no cutting. It's knitted in a panel and then attached. To understand the process and technical aside took a while, and we wanted to make sure it would be unique in the market."
Those archives she mentioned have been somewhat of a labor of love, with the company chief digging deep to stock the racks; the back catalog that came with the brand wasn't the crème de la crème, with the best items having disappeared beforehand.
"The pieces that were truly iconic were given away or taken by someone, so I had to buy them back from eBay and private parties," Lubov revealed to us. "We actually printed out every runway show he did and matched the pieces that we had in our vintage library and figured out what was missing. We went on eBay and found some of them, they were like 400 euros, and we'd go to the collectors, like Resurrection. Those were like $1,400, but sometimes we'd bargain or do trades. Then I found somebody in Paris who was the muse of Hervé Léger. She had tons of them and was willing to part with them—she was in her 70s."
The archive was important too—that's where super-stylist Rachel Zoe rediscovered the brand and got her celebrity clients in it.
"One day Rachel Zoe stopped by and said, 'I want to look at your archive.' She was looking for this ombre dress, a real '80s moment, and she came in, borrowed the dresses, and the next thing we know it was a whole moment where every buyer from every major store called us. The line wasn't even ready!" Azria remembered. "We thought we were going to launch with accessories."
Lindsay Lohan in the brand at a Maxim party in 2007
Around 2007 is when the bandage dress became the bandage dress. Styles were finally made shoppable online that summer, though sell-outs were quick and common. The list of celebs who wore a curve-accentuating mini grew like crazy, with names like Rihanna, Victoria Beckham, and super-fan Kim Kardashian all sporting a version. And while it's hard to find a star who hasn't been in the label's bandage dress at some point, for Azria, it's more unexpected names who have provided the biggest thrill.
