Max Azria dies at age 70

Max Azria will remain one of the brightest sucess stories of 1990s and 2000s ready-to-wear. The designer passed away on Monday 6 May in Houston, U.S., the country that was his adopted home for the past 38 years, his wife Lubov Azria announced to the American press.

Born in Tunisia in 1949, Max Azria moved to Paris with his family in his youth. It was thus in France that he made his first steps into the world of textiles, alongside his brother Serge Azria, with whom he founded one of the best-flourishing suppliers of Sentier, Paris' oldest fabric district. The brothers sold the business in 1981 before leaving for the United States, where Max Azria would make his name as a designer.

In 1989, he launched his high-end womenswear brand, BCBG Max Azria. Encouraged by his success, the Tunisian designer built a large fashion group bit by bit, endowing his main label with an atelier line that would show in New York, and also acquiring labels such as Hervé Leger, which he revived in the 2000s; Dorotennis and Manoukian.

Following the entry into the capital of multiple investment funds, Max Azria finally resigned from his executive role within BCBG in 2016, one year before the bankruptcy filing and takeover by American group Marquee Brands, which remains the owner of BCBG Max Azria and the young line BCBGeneration, despite the closure of numerous subsidiaries, such as in France and Japan in 2017.

Max Azria, Californian by adoption, then went for a complete change of industry, taking up an executive role at ZappLight, an American LED lightbulb firm. He died on May 6 after a long illness.

Max Azria dies at age 70

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