Keep 'Em Glamoring For More

Valvo also designs a plus-size collection for Saks Fifth Avenue. "Queen Latifah, that's the inspiration. She's totally Rubenesque . . . gorgeous and Rubenesque," he says. "It's a couple-million-dollar business. It's nothing to sneeze at."

When he visits stores -- "Give me any event and I'm there," he says -- his plus-size customers converge. "They yell at you," he says. They want more options and Valvo represents a direct line to Seventh Avenue. He is one of the few luxury designers to respond to their needs. Can't he tell his colleagues to accommodate the large ladies, too?

Resurrection

Badgley and Mischka, both 44, have a tendency to dress alike -- not in matching attire, but in the same neatly pressed, country club style. They have military posture and perfect hair.

They are partners professionally and personally and both were born in the Midwest. Mischka grew up in Southern California and Badgley in Oregon. They met at Parsons, from which they graduated in 1985. Mischka worked in menswear with Willi Smith and Badgley was a womens-wear designer at Donna Karan. Eventually they decided that if they were going to work long hours designing, it might as well be for their own label.

They plodded along as most new designers do, making ends meet however they could and trying to drum up customers and media interest. The designers regularly joke that in the beginning most people assumed "Badgley Mischka" was an elderly Russian seamstress. Once folks knew the label was composed of two men, no one could remember who was who -- a confusion that continues because the two are almost always together. Mischka is the blond who comes across as an introvert, displaying a palpable uneasiness when confronted with a microphone or a reporter's notepad and pen. Badgley has darker features and salt-and-pepper hair. He displays more ease discussing himself and the company, but he is no less cautious about each word.

This spring, Bergdorf Goodman hosted Badgley Mischka's first public appearance since the company was resurrected. The designers stood formally among a small group of shoppers and well-wishers as models strolled around the intimate fourth-floor salon. The clothes for fall 2005 had been inspired by an Irving Penn photograph of a Charles James dress and the gowns were dusky shades of pink and pale blue sprinkled with antiqued beads. The models looked alarmingly thin -- virtually breakable -- away from the grandeur of a runway where they are surrounded by their own emaciated kind instead of women of more modest height and generous girth.

The designers, reserved and stiff and wearing coordinated suit jackets, pointed out their favorite pieces amid a soundtrack of murmuring guests who clutched flutes of champagne and fingered $3,000 caftans, jeweled and stitched from Indian silk. A heavyset gentleman, who'd caught no one's attention, suddenly raised an anti-fur placard and began shouting about the slaughter of animals in the name of fashion.

In an example of emphatic inaction, the room went silent and no one moved. The protester yelled on until he was finally and calmly led away. A woman sniffed, "He was wearing leather shoes. Did you see that? Stupid man." And everyone went back to champagne, expensive frocks and stiffness.

There is a lot of hand-holding and reassuring in evening-wear sales and during these personal appearances. Oh, you look so slim! Oh, you look so elegant! Yes, yes, of course you can show a little skin! Badgley and Mischka are warm but not chummy. They do not play the role of fashion-savvy confidants.

Some women will insist on wearing a specific designer's evening wear. But most women are not loyal to a brand. "With evening wear, you don't buy a brand," Valvo says, "you buy it because you look good in it." A designer is selling a dream, Valvo says, not the prestige of his name.

Valvo knows that peddling dreams can be a daunting and frustrating proposition. Away from the star circuit of thoroughbred figures, these Cinderella gowns must accommodate lumps and bumps, hips and tummies, and small, unyielding budgets.

Badgley and Mischka are prepared to step out of the realm of Bergdorf and Rodeo Drive, where their most popular size, they say, is a 10, and get out there in Middle America, in the South, in the malls and wherever women need formal gowns, cocktail dresses and fancy suits. They are braced to meet the average American woman shopping for weddings, holiday parties and the one charity ball she will ever attend. On average, that customer is a size 14.

"We have a couple already," Mischka offers.

"We can embrace that," Badgley says. "It'll be a challenge."

That woman can be as demanding as a starlet. She wants personal attention; she frets about her rear view. But the only place her photo is likely to appear is in the family album.