Max Goes Green

(LOS ANGELES) Max Azria is looking to give his Melrose Avenue boutique an artistic jolt, commissioning artist Patrick Dougherty to create a large-scale outdoor art installation that he, along with Lubov Azria and Eva Mendes, will unveil at a party on December 4. The event will benefit the Environmental Defense Fund and feature the sounds of The MisShapes.
 
The entire facade of the first freestanding Max Azria boutique, located at 8026 Melrose Avenue, will be covered as though it were a rambunctious phenomenon of natural growth. Using tree sapling as construction material, the sculpture, which will be on view to the public through January 2008, will envelop the 2,700-sq.-ft. building like a piece of stick fabric and reproduce on its surface a fleet of organic swirls and eddies. "There is something very exciting about presenting a work of art on a major Los Angeles thoroughfare, as opposed to showing it indoors," noted Azria of Dougherty's first significant outdoor installation.

Three more Max Azria boutiques are slated to open by year's end in West Palm Beach, New York's SoHo, and Newport Beach, CA.
JIM SHI