is it a hole in one if you HIT THE CEILING in the process?

It was a huge pleasure being at the Herve Leger by Max Azria show during Fashion Week - these are the dresses you really need to see up close. My own commentary is coming in another post, because it's kinda Friday night, and it's kinda late, and I'm kinda lazy, but for now I have a video of Lubov Azria (incredibly sweet!) backstage and some questions I asked her before the video interview (transcribing these from a recording was really hard...backstage is noisy.) And, because of FTC regulations, I'm supposed to let you know that I am receiving compensation for my collaboration with Herve Leger and Harper's Bazaar in writing this post. It's 100% honest, though, duh.
Oh and the video gets cut off because MY STUPID MEMORY CARD WAS FULL (please remind me why I take pictures of my TV when Seinfeld is on, and why I never delete them) but um you see where it's going? Use your imagination?

When you have to break down runway pieces into more wearable, retail-friendly pieces, which elements do you keep?
Well I think that when we start with an idea - like for example, what I'm wearing is a wearable piece; I have to go for more of a simple piece - we take an element of lacing, because a lot of it's really for collectors...Like, for example, those dresses are usually ready to wear, with the silver. (She pointed at this one-) But those, (points to dresses with lacing, like this one-)

even though we do sell them, they're going to be produced maybe by about 10 pieces. So we take that element, for example, whatever our original idea is, and we apply it to basic pieces, so that person will feel like they're getting the look of the show.

The whole idea for us when we were making this is sort of like, you know, the whole weather environment; how everything is changing. We wanted to kind of protect. And also, to wear Herve Leger, you have to exercise. So the whole idea is defining the body shape of a woman to really sort of bring out that athleticism, even if you don't work out.

You wear tennis shoes to exercise and then you get to wear them as a dress.
Exactly.

More on the dresses...
Because there's no real pattern, and each band is applied...so we had this great idea, because we work with laces and things like that, that instead of taking ideas from the tennis shoes, we started creating laces all around, you know, and so that's how it came. And so then, we started flocking -- you see the flocking? Flocking is the process of like, velvet, almost, going on top, so we used flocking to create texture. And so, but if you see all of this is individual bandages, and they go from quarter-inch to one inch. That's a technique that was developed by Herve Leger. He used to make hats; he was a milliner.

So that's how this whole thing evolved. I mean, it's amazing to me, these straps, like this is a good dress - this one is around 8,000 dollars, and it takes about a month and a half, by hand, to make it.

Wow.