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A Lucrative Niche

Valvo, 51, is tall with the broad shoulders and chest of someone who knows the difference between a bench press and a lat pulldown and executes both moves on a regular basis. He grew up in New York's Westchester County and both his parents worked in the medical field. He has a closely shaven head, an amiable demeanor and on a July morning is dressed in black trousers, a striped shirt, black leather slides and has a blue tape measure slung around his neck.

He doesn't have a degree in business -- his background is in fine arts and he also attended Parsons School of Design -- but when founding his company he made a particularly smart financial decision. Because he was financing it with his own money -- $15,000 -- he needed to make clothes that not only would sell, but would immediately turn a profit. In the late 1980s, he realized that a woman searching for an evening gown had two choices. She could go to a designer and spend thousands of dollars or she could go to what department stores call "special-occasion dressing" and spend a few hundred bucks on a dress that made her look like a bridesmaid.

Valvo saw a lucrative niche. He made dresses that sell for about $800. They are an indulgence for a budget-conscious woman, but she receives a lot of panache for her money. And for a woman accustomed to spending $3,000 on a single gown, Valvo's dresses are a bargain, allowing her to flesh out her social season wardrobe without spending a fortune.

Valvo was catering to homemakers and professional women when celebrities started buying his clothes off the rack, drawn in by his aesthetics and palatable prices. Theactress Julia Ormond was the first big star to buy one of his gowns, a white, embroidered satin dress cut on the bias.

Then a calamity occurred of proportions that could get a celebrity ridiculed in People and get a designer blackballed from the Upper East Side to Beverly Hills. Paula Zahn, Vanessa Williams and Ormond were all photographed wearing the same dress.

Valvo knew he'd lose the celebrities if he didn't create a more exclusive, and ultimately more expensive, segment of the collection. In 1996, he added gowns that sell for thousands of dollars. And in the process, he turned the fashion industry's conventional wisdom -- start with a runway vision and let it trickle down to the masses -- on its head.

"I had a collection, so I could afford to have a couture line," he says. "Couture sells, but it's not profitable. You're spending half a million dollars to put on a runway show. How can you sustain that?"

Valvo struggled to gain respect from the industry as a high-end designer. To some degree, it remains a challenge. No matter that Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kim Cattrall, Beyonce Knowles and Queen Latifah wear his clothes. When it comes to prestige within the insular world of New York fashion, his commercial successes -- all those money-making mother-of-the-bride dresses -- hang around his neck like an albatross.

But Valvo has a lot to brag about. So to tell his story, he gets comfortable in the ivory-colored, private salon within his 23rd-floor showroom in the Garment District. Entering this room is like stepping into a cloud. The cabinets are white. So is the conference table. Translucent white draperies cover expansive windows. A mirror the size of a small garage door leans against a wall. This is where celebrities -- and other pampered customers -- come to try on clothes.

His dresses are known for their fit. "I used to have three fit models because even if the bust measures the same, a woman can be big across the back or be all out front," he says. "Nothing went into production unless it fit decently on all three. I did that for three or four years. In the long run, it paid off for me. Now, I only have one."

He has just launched a line of swimsuits that, like his dresses, have been constructed from the inside out. They have hidden support for the breasts and tricks to make the waist narrower, the result of an almost architectural process that took six months to get right.

Valvo also can show off the latest variation on his "shutter dress," a bias-cut, ribbon-pleated dress -- sometimes long, sometimes short, sometime lined in lace, sometimes not -- that has accounted for more than $4 million in sales. The style has been in his collection for five years and will be in it for years to come.