Southern California Living

Next Friday in Southern California Living, Times fashion writer Mimi Avins profiles Max Azria, head of BCBG. Everyone said it couldn’t be done--no one could build a global fashion powerhouse from a Los Angeles base. But Azria, who immigrated to L.A. in 1981 from Paris, didn’t care what everyone said. His empire--encompassing 60 BCBG stores throughout the world, the BCBG line sold in department stores, BCBG menswear, accessories and footwear--has steadily grown in sales and increasingly earned the respect of fashion insiders who were ready to dismiss him as an upstart knockoff artist.

In addition to Jeannine Stein’s Fashion Police column and Runway to Reality, we will roll out a beauty column as well as a feature called Personal Assets, a first-person column on the clothing we hold dear. Times staff writer Lynell George kicks it off with an essay on a pair of sneakers. Not just any pair of sneakers. As she writes, they lived through five presidents, three cities and a gajillion pickup basketball games before she finally--and sadly--threw them out.