Keep 'Em Glamoring For More

The goal is to build a company with about $100 million in wholesale income. "A nice, medium-size business," Hops says.

No Investment Clothes

In 1996, actress Winona Ryder wore a pale peach, beaded, chantilly-lace gown to the Academy Awards. Her hair was styled in fingerwaves and the sophisticated dress looked like it had come from the era of the quickstep and sloe-gin fizzes. That same year, Teri Hatcher wore a hand-embossed, silver velvet gown to the Emmys. "That was our biggest media blitz," Badgley recalls. "We couldn't believe it."

"We'd always done glamorous clothes," Mischka says, "but in 1995, 1996 we got calls from a couple of girls who wanted to wear our gowns. Grunge had stopped and minimalism had stopped."

"We thought, 'How weird. They want to borrow a dress?' " Badgley says.

Hollywood's influential stylists favored Badgley Mischka because evening wear was the company's specialty. "We weren't sportswear designers with six evening gowns at the end of the collection," Badgley says. "That's what we do. We had more gowns to show them."

Their clothes have never been as revealing or as overtly sexy as those from Versace. Their gowns are likely to come in pleasantly muted pastels while Armani favors severe shades of navy, gray and taupe. Neither Badgley nor Mischka thinks of fashion as an outlet for expressionistic experimentation. They are disinclined to transform a duvet into a ball gown or to stitch a formal dress from yards of shredded chiffon that looks as though it has been salvaged from the Titanic.

Badgley Mischka frocks are not investment clothes meant to be worn for a lifetime. These are not Armani suits or Chanel jackets. These are entrance-making gowns so memorable that a woman might not want to wear the same one twice lest her subsequent entrances be accompanied by snide commentary epitomized by "not that dress again." While there are some women for whom that would not pose a problem (indeed, they'd simply buy more gowns), those quite often are the same women getting the clothes free.

"That's the fundamental fallacy of anyone who believes there's a business," Amsale's Brown says. "The most obvious customers -- celebrities and socialites -- don't pay for the dresses."

Courting celebrities also is an expensive endeavor. It used to be that getting an actress into a designer's gown was a much cheaper form of advertising than spending thousands of dollars for an ad page in Vogue. But at the level of the Oscars, Emmys or the Golden Globes, celebrity publicity is no longer free. Expenses can include first-class airline tickets for the star and her entourage, the cost of producing multiple one-of-a-kind dresses from which she can choose, or even outright cash payments.

Media attention does not necessarily translate into sales. Most socialites do not have Judd's figure, so while they might admire a dress she has worn, they won't buy it. And while a dress Badgley Mischka once made for Lopez sold out, the designers say, that's only a handful of dresses. The greatest beneficiary of red-carpet appearances are mid-priced labels that knock off designer goods. Manufacturers of prom dresses, for instance, have done brisk sales cranking out Oscar-style gowns for the discerning teenager.

Badgley Mischka had a bad -- no, impossible -- business plan. In a single season, a high-end specialty store such as Saks Fifth Avenue might order 100 pieces from Badgley Mischka. Not 100 of a specific style, but 100 pieces in total to be rationed to all its stores. (Only a tiny number of retailers can sell $3,000 dresses.) A designer simply can't sell enough of these special dresses -- at a reasonably acceptable price -- to cover the fabric, the labor, the marketing, the overhead . . . the headaches inherent in creating a runway-worthy frock.

"It's all high drama. 'I need it tomorrow. I need it special. . . .' So you're overnighting samples and cutting special items," Valvo says, of the demanding dance between a couture customer and the designers like Badgley Mischka who cater to them. "That involves a lot of cost. There's no way you can charge all that to a customer in America and have her pay for it. In Paris, a couture dress is $25,000. We're giving her a made-to-measure piece for $5,000 or $10,000."