Fashion : Bravo, the Pacesetter of High-Profile Society
Rose Marie Bravo isn’t a designer label. But from her Union Square office in San Francisco, 38-year-old Bravo wields enormous influence over what the women of Los Angeles will wear to lunch at the Bistro Garden or a performance at the Music Center.
Appointed chairman and chief executive of I. Magnin and Bullocks Wilshire last spring by her mentor, Edward S. Finkelstein, chairman and chief executive of the department stores’ parent company, R. H. Macy & Co., Bravo is a retail star--one of the youngest and highest-ranking women in the retail business nationwide.
Her salary was estimated in excess of $1,000 per day in an article that ran in the San Francisco Examiner last fall.
She is not only making her mark on Macy’s two toniest divisions, but also on polite society, an important constituency of both Bullocks Wilshire and I. Magnin (preferred by Nancy Reagan)--or at least on how the social people dress.
Paloma Picasso black leather tote bag in hand, Chanel purse on her shoulder, Bravo hits the road with the frequency of a rock star as she dashes from European collections to store inspections to society-splashed San Francisco dinners to honor her name-brand designers. All along the way, she makes mental notes of what high-profile types such as San Francisco socialite Ann Getty wear.
She was on the road again recently for one of her frequent visits to Los Angeles, this time to concentrate on I. Magnin. (She oversees all 23 I. Magnin stores, including eight in Southern California, along with the seven Southern California Bullocks Wilshire stores.)
On this particular day, a car picks her up at home in the wee hours of the morning and delivers her to the airport in time to make it to I. Magnin, Beverly Hills, by 10 a.m. Italian designers Rosita and Tai Missoni are making a personal appearance.
The Missonis are flattered--if a little shocked--to see the chic, high-energy executive standing in the store to greet them. She wears a beige, chevron-patterned suit from their fall collection. (Suit size: large. “I thought, did I gain that much weight?” Bravo giggles.)
“We were always very nicely received at I. Magnin, I must say,” Rosita says, “but we didn’t expect to see the chairman .”
After spending the morning attending to the Missonis, making sure among other things that they have enough to eat, Bravo holes up inside an office for a conference with Betty Leonard, store manager and operating vice president.
Instead of talking sales figures, she fires off a multitude of questions about certain key social events. Especially the recent gala for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.
“Does everybody go to this thing?” she grills Leonard. “What were they wearing? Who were the important designers? Any trends in the dresses? Did you see lots of chiffon?
“Was there any Armani? What about St. Laurent with the brocade?” she inquires of two designers with their own boutiques at I. Magnin.
She even wants to know trends in evening bags. Were they beaded, satin or quilted?
These aren’t idle inquiries. The Beverly Hills store is a barometer for all the others. (Half of I. Magnin’s business is done in Southern California and Phoenix.)
“If something is upscale and unique and expensive and it doesn’t sell in Beverly Hills, well, chances are it’s not going to sell anywhere we have a store,” Bravo explains.
“The ladies in L.A. want whatever’s new, whatever’s hot. They want it first. They want it now .”
Bravo, a Macy’s New York careerist, rose from associate buyer of cosmetics and fragrances in 1974 to senior vice president for merchandising (cosmetics, coats, accessories, fine jewelry) before Finkelstein sent her packing to San Francisco last April. It was just after he acquired Federated Department Stores’ California divisions, including the Bullock’s and Bullocks Wilshire stores as well as I. Magnin.
“Mr. Finkelstein basically said to me, ‘I want you to run these stores, now figure out how to do it,’ ” Bravo recalls.
She put Bullocks Wilshire and I. Magnin under one management, consolidated buying offices and made merchandise changes, while being sensitive to the stores’ differences.
Hoping to imitate the success of the menswear business for Bullocks Wilshire, for instance, a men’s suit and clothing department opened in I. Magnin, Beverly Hills, three months ago. In exchange, Bullocks Wilshire has recently seen an influx of women’s ready-to-wear designer labels.
Next, like a woman redecorating two houses at once, Bravo started a massive, $5-million-plus (sources say) renovation and redecoration of the Beverly Hills I. Magnin store, and began planning changes for Bullocks Wilshire.
Now, the designer salon at Magnin’s has a working fireplace and a pouf covered in a Bill Blass leopard print. Soon, Bullocks Wilshire’s first floor will get some spit and polish.
Between parties and renovations, Bravo jets off to Europe to cover ready-to-wear and couture collections and touches down in Manhattan 10 times a year. But socializing in California, in the name of her stores, is an important part of her job.
She says she got intensive training in that particular skill while working in cosmetics for Macy’s in New York. She refers to it as “vendor relations,” or the care and feeding of fashion and beauty images, egos and personalities. When she began launching designer perfumes from Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Galanos and others, she says, “I sort of got the gist of the importance of designers.”
The same week she played host to the Missonis, Bravo put on a breakfast for Bob Mackie, who was appearing in I. Magnin in San Francisco, and oversaw a charity luncheon at I. Magnin in Seattle for Georgette Mosbacher, president of La Prairie cosmetics and the wife of Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher.
That weekend, Oscar de la Renta arrived in San Francisco to receive the Mary Ann Magnin Award, and Bravo, appropriately dressed in De la Renta, was hosting another dinner. (Ann Getty tossed yet another party.)
Somehow, she manages to do it all and seldom step on anybody’s toes. Quite the opposite. Robert A. Nielsen, chairman and president of Revlon fashion and designer group, maintains: “Rose Marie has proved you can be effective in business and be a nice person. When she heard my wife was ill recently, she called her at home and at the hospital.”
Michael Gould, president of Giorgio, Beverly Hills, and Parfums Stern, throws up his hands. “I’ve got nothing bad to say about her.”
The most critical remark comes from Carol Phillips, chairman of Clinique, who recalls Bravo’s cosmetics-buying days in New York: “At that time she wasn’t married and struck me as one of those 24-hour-a-day businesswomen.”
Her workaholic ways do put a crimp on her private life. Last May, her husband of six years, Bill Jackey, a furniture manufacturer’s representative with whom she has had a long-distance relationship since she moved West last April, closed their New York apartment and relocated in San Francisco.
For their summer vacation, the couple spent the weekend in Santa Barbara. But of course, Bravo sneaked off to see the local I. Magnin.
The job, she admits, is “all consuming. It leaves little time for anything.” She bemoans the fact that she only sees her family in Florida once or twice a year, and even though her best friend of 20 years now lives an hour away from her in Palo Alto, the two women have only been able to get together three times since Bravo moved there.
Long ago, Bravo decided, to her mother’s dismay, that having children was out of the question. (Jackey has two grown children from a previous marriage.) “It would be unfair to have a child in this kind of situation,” Bravo says about her demanding schedule.
Jane Evans, former president of Monet jewelry and currently president of the InterPacific retail group, says Jackey’s ego doesn’t appear to be on the line.
“Many high-ranking women have husbands who don’t have high-powered positions, like my own husband, but they are willing to accept our high profiles because their egos are strong. I think he’s very proud of her,” Evans says.
The couple intends to spend non-working weekends floating on the San Francisco Bay in their 27-foot fishing boat, which arrived from Long Island two weeks ago. Bravo doesn’t catch many fish, but she does let down her fashion standards, braving the seas in long underwear, wool hat and Jackey’s old army jacket.
An admitted failure in the homemaking department, she’s appreciative of her husband’s cooking; if he’s away, she orders takeout salad from Macy’s Cellar, a restaurant in the specialty store. A former English major at Fordham University in New York, Bravo always has a stack of books at her bedside. Most recently, Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
Ask her about the future, and she’ll tell you about the future of shopping. Bravo believes it will be a throwback to the past. “I almost think, in a way, we might go back to what once existed when customers had their own saleslady, and she helped them from head to toe.
“All this talk about computers and mail-order shopping, I don’t really buy. When it comes down to it, you need a human being. It’s a very human business.”
