Niki Cheng and Shaokao Cheng at their Chelsea BoConcept store. (PMc)

The first time The Observer met Niki and Shaokao Cheng, it was July, during the opening night of Julio Gaggia’s art show. Mr. Gaggia, the boyfriend of the plastic surgeon Mark Warfel, was preparing his work “Living Art: Chelsea Boy Apartment,” during which he would live for five days as a window display model at the BoConcept furniture store on West 18th Street. He spent the week eating, sleeping, working—and performing other, less-mentionable activities—in a showroom that divided him from gawkers outside with a pane of glass.

While we lounged about on the display furniture, socialite photographer Patrick McMullan brought over a petite woman with short, pixie-cropped hair.

“Niki is one of the few Power Asians in New York society,” he loudly whispered, flourishing Ms. Cheng before us. She smiled shyly and posed for a photograph before excusing herself.

It would be two weeks before we realized that Ms. Cheng and her husband owned the store where we had dropped more than one canapé between the cushions of a $3,000 couch.

In fact, the couple owns all five locations of the Danish furniture store in New York City, and another two in New Jersey. But the stores themselves aren’t the reason Mr. McMullan calls the Chengs “Power Asians.” Rather, it’s the couple’s seemingly innate social instincts, their ability to leverage a fairly cookie-cutter, mid-market design base into a celebrity-filled social whirl. One might say “Only in America,” or (even worse) “Only in New York,” but this wouldn’t exactly cover it. There is a certain type that thrives in Manhattan no matter what they’re selling, no matter where they’re from, no matter how few resources they have upon arriving.

If Darwin were alive today and researching the survival of New York species, he would do well to study the Chengs. They’re not social climbers, per se, but social movers—Gladwellian “connectors” who know everyone from celebrities to the guys with the best drapes in the city. They share their knowledge strategically with other key additions to their ever-expanding Rolodex. For Niki Cheng, 39, and Shaokao Cheng, 41, life is not about climbing a ladder. It’s about traversing the monkey bars that crisscross Manhattan.

“Niki and Shaokao have a wonderfully progressive view of New York society,” said Village Voice scribe Michael Musto. “They mix into their social circle drag performers, club holdouts, top celebrities and the corporate crowd. It’s all-inclusive.”

Last Friday, we met Ms. Cheng for a second time—again at the Chelsea store. While we were there, actress Faye Dunaway came in and had what one could only call a fit of method acting for a sequel to Mommie Dearest. The recently evicted Academy Award winner had come in two weeks ago and bought a piece of art from the store, and now she wanted Ms. Cheng’s help on a new design project.

“I adore this store. I’ve raved about it; they really need to get some of this stuff to London,” Ms. Dunaway told The Observer. “They don’t have anything like it there now.”

Unable to find a confidentiality agreement for us to sign, she stormed out shortly thereafter. (We didn’t get to tell her that there are actually 13 BoConcept stores in the U.K.) It was the kind of scene that no one wants a reporter to witness while writing a profile, but if there was any bad blood, Ms. Cheng didn’t show it.

“Really, don’t be upset,” she told The Observer, rubbing our arm soothingly. “She’ll call back. Anyway, where were we?”

The Chengs are adept at pleasing their celebrity clients, a skill that has come in handy while designing P. Diddy’s home, Jay-Z’s office (bed included), Mary J. Blige’s entire apartment and Estelle’s closet. Susan Sarandon, Lil’ Kim and Patti LaBelle have also used the duo’s interior design services, and Ms. LaBelle sang at the BoConcept flagship store for a Lance Armstrong benefit. They count designers Vivienne Tam, Asher Levine and Zang Toi among their closest friends.

Not that everyone in their circle is a brand name. After Ms. Dunaway left, we rushed over to Astor Place, where BoConcept was sponsoring a tent for a Christmas tree stand run by a Brit named Marco Romero, his girlfriend and his brother. Though he runs a jewelry shop in Greece most of the year, Mr. Romero spends three weeks in December living out of a van selling holiday firs, and Ms. Cheng took it upon herself to decorate the tent that the trio takes shifts in.

Despite a franchise that traffics mainly in large-scale items, Ms. Cheng has a burgeoning obsession with “micro-units”—apartments that are between 250 and 300 square feet.

She wanted to prove that it was possible to use BoConcept furniture to decorate a very small space, and the Romeros provided her with an interesting challenge. Their tent was about seven feet long and seven wide, and the guys had to hunch over even when standing at its tallest point. Empty, the space seemed minuscule. But after Ms. Cheng put down an orange rug, a short shelving unit, an ottoman, a table and two chairs (as well as several well-placed decorative objects), the tent looked like a living room on the Lower East Side.

It’s never quite clear why Ms. Cheng decided to treat Romero and his tent like VIPs, but when it was revealed that a $3,000 lamp from the store broke on the ride over, Ms. Cheng gasped, then turned to Mr. Romero. “We’ll have to get you another one.”

Shaokao Cheng, Cienna Cheng and Niki Cheng. (Patrick McMullan)

Perhaps the random act of kindness was a viral marketing ploy, or stemmed from her own back story of struggle. (Probably a bit of both, if we’re being honest.) Niki Cheng—née Chong—was 25 when she moved to New York in the mid-’90s. She had an architecture degree from the University of Malaysia and a visa that was only good for one year. She was scraping by as a coat-check girl at Von when she met Mr. Cheng, a young banker whose father had given him a $90,000 loan to buy a single-bedroom apartment on Madison and 32nd.

The two were introduced by a restaurant co-worker of hers, and she began relocating her belongings to his apartment after the first date, she said. After a heady three months of dating, Mr. Cheng invited her to move into his place permanently. “He didn’t realize I already had,” she laughed.

But there was a catch: his apartment in Murray Hill would be undergoing extensive renovations for two years. They made a pact: if they could live through the 24 months without breaking up, they would become a pair in the business sense as well. Mr. Cheng also pushed his girlfriend to get a job at a furniture retail outlet that would give her a three-year visa.

One day while working there, Ms. Cheng came upon a catalog that featured a coffee table identical to the type she sold. Except that Ms. Cheng’s outlet was selling her model for $2,000, and this unheard of Danish brand was selling its at $299.

The brand was called BoConcept, and its international franchise operation was just getting off the ground. The Chengs approached the company with the idea of opening a New York store on Madison Avenue, but were turned down. BoConcept’s owners thought that space in the city was too expensive and there wouldn’t be enough room to show the big items. In their view, New Yorkers were not the target market for their oversized aesthetic.

But the duo were undeterred. “We had spent a year putting together research that proved that this store could be opened in New York,” Ms. Cheng said. They also showed their plans to a friend they met at Bungalow 8.

Their friend turned out to be designer Max Azria, who spent 10 minutes calculating the figures the couple had acquired during their research, sketched a number down on his pad, and told them to go for it.

In 2003, BoConcept agreed to let the couple try their hand at a New York flagship for $300,000. “We had everything to lose,” Ms. Cheng said. “They had nothing to lose.” Niki was 28 and Shaokao 30. They had recently gotten married in Hawaii after three years of dating because, as Mr. Cheng put it, “My wife went to three different psychics who told her that marriage would bring us good fortune.” Mr. Cheng and his father remortgaged their houses to pay for the initial investment.

They barely survived the first two years; they couldn’t figure out the computer systems, and there were issues with shipping. Their business model might not have actually worked had Mr. and Ms. Cheng not been so socially ambitious.

With his degree in engineering and hers in architecture, they were able to use their conjoined home-decorating skills for seemingly un-BoConcept-related purposes. When one big-name celebrity client called, nothing from BoConcept would fit in their closet, so Ms. Cheng happily suggested shelves and fixtures that did. Soon, the singer was calling the couple to redesign her living room, and this time they used items from their Dutch catalog.

The fact that BoConcept’s furniture design is somewhere between IKEA and West Elm is somewhat beside the point. What the Chengs have done was take a relatively bland furniture store from a not especially popular Danish franchise and parlay it into a personal calling card.

When the two aren’t peddling 12-piece sectionals, they can often be found at yoga or otherwise getting fit. At 12:54 a.m. Saturday morning, The Observer received a text from Niki, who asked if we wanted to attend a 10 a.m. Bikram session with her. (We pleaded out.)

Later that morning, Ms. Cheng was at the Madison store, dressed from head to toe in brown Juicy velour. She helped hunk real estate agent Ryan Serhant from Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing find items for his move from Pine Street to Chelsea ... which of course will be documented on Bravo’s website. After he left, Ms. Cheng rushed out herself for a private second yoga session of the day, but not before inviting The Observer over for a home-cooked meal the next night with “some friends” that included Ms. Tam and Mr. Musto.
http://youtu.be/JjI2SwrGnHs
A 2010 BoConcept commerical featuring Mr. Musto and Ms. Cheng.

In 2006, the Chengs moved with their baby daughter Cienna from Murray Hill to a $1.7 million, 2,200-square-foot artist’s loft with 12-foot-high ceilings on Fifth Avenue at 29th Street. This is the space, apparently, where you can keep two six-foot ottomans without it feeling cluttered.

Cienna is now 6, their son Eden 3; when we arrived Sunday evening, their mom was running around the gigantic apartment, scooping them up for bed. Ms. Cheng looked ready to fall asleep herself, after making a feast: home-cooked dishes with pork belly, chicken, eggplant and fish, and a lotus soup for dessert. Ms. Tam was there, and Mr. Musto showed up for dessert. Mr. Levine wasn’t able to make it, but the table was more than full.

Mr. Cheng explained that she had rescheduled her meeting with Ms. Dunaway, but was too busy cooking to make it down to the store. So she had the actress come up to her apartment and multitasked.
As we were leaving, Mr. Cheng asked sincerely if we would come back and have dinner when we weren’t on the job. Ms. Cheng had already invited us to their Christmas party and a luxury garage sale they were co-sponsoring this week. They were so nice! How could we decline when they were so generous?

Another rung added to the monkey bars.

Nina Agdal, Max Azria, Lubov Azria in Hervé Léger, Dania Ramirez and Rico Love are all smiles at The Boom Boom Room.

Rebecca Taylor was not at Lincoln Center. Had we not been slammed with events, emails, editorial projects, tweets and social babysitting of our entourage, we would have easily noted this. Rebecca Taylor was scheduled for 2 p.m. on Saturday at Highline Studios Downtown. Yet we had eagerly arrived at the Mercedes-Benz complex, bewildered and irritated. American Express to the rescue. The Observer made the smart move to get in touch with the skybox mavens for a little good old fashion week S.O.S. And rescued we were!

Within ten minutes, The Observer was ushered to the dark and stylish skybox, Champagne in hand and fruit on our plate. Amen. Keen on a break from the masses, we schmoozed with publicists, AmEx VIPs and other media gurus. Before long, we watched from our elite little post high above, as Mara Hoffman paraded her vibrant, billowy frocks and caftans down the runway.

More than content to combine work and play, we handed off our Hervé Léger seats to a cohort and hunkered down for the show, refreshed and content.

After the show, one of the producers of the lavish hideaway announced that Lubov Azria herself would address the intimate coterie for a brief discussion.

“I am his midlife crisis,” joked Ms. Azria about her fashion mogul husband.

When asked about if she had experienced any drama on the day of the show, she reported that look No. 4, Maria, had a panic attack.

“She couldn’t breathe,” Ms. Azria revealed and went on to explain that the models are teens. “That’s why they have those bodies!”

Model drama aside, Ms. Azria was composed and engaging throughout the chat.

Things got even better, when Max and Lubov Azria invited The Observer to their Fashion Week after-party later that evening, which was presented by star-power media magnets Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. The Top of the Standard was brimming with beauty—Daisy Fuentes, models Jessica White and Jessica Hart, and Dania Ramirez sightings come to mind—but the best attraction was delivered by DJ Harley Viera-Newton and DJ Kiss who had us sloshing and swaying deep into the night.  Before our exit, we just couldn’t resist one more exchange with Ms. Azria and dove in for a kiss-kiss, which she gracefully welcomed.

Having developed a winning formula over the decades, Mr. Azria explained that he draws inspiration from the same source each season. “It’s always a beautiful woman,” he said through a thick French accent. “It’s about smiling. It’s the light,” he said, gently stroking our rather unkempt tresses the way one might pet a friend's cur.

We wondered where Mr. Azria stayed when he came to New York. “I stay in a very small hotel that nobody recognizes me. I like that. I don’t like to show off,” he said. An assistant pointed at her watch. The show was supposed to start 15 minutes earlier, meaning by Fashion Week standards everything was right on schedule. En faisant la bise, he embraced us without hurry, smiling his grandfatherly smile and wishing us well before, much to our chagrin, twirling our tangled mane once more.

We traipsed down the runway through aggressive photographers snapping the likes of Giada DeLaurentiis and Menounos, to our seat in the front row. Across the aisle, a parachute pant-clad Erin Wasson tee-heed and giggled beside Cory Kennedy (bird's nest hair and all). Publicists scurried about, ordering the stragglers to take their seats before the catwalk seal was removed...

In the meantime, we made niceties with the Wall Street Journal to our left: “Who the hell is that?” she whispered under her breath. Not a clue!

Then it got good: The lights had just been dimmed -- warning all that statuesque, boney creatures were about to saunter by in Lubov and Max’s latest BCBG creations— when all of a sudden— Kennedy chuckled, kick off her heels, whispered something to Wasson— who in-turn threw her head back with delight and cackled "Go girl!" Kennedy then darted down the runway-- shoeless— mere seconds before the first model walked.

The Observer had no time to react to this bizarre, yet riotous outburst, before the models paced by donning bold color-blocked shift dresses, autumnal-hued trench coats, and marvelous gold-accented clutches. A few of the fur patchwork trims screamed “attack of the wooly beast,” but all-in-all, the collection had bon chic, bon genre.

Now a third incident has been reported in Tribeca involving the ubiquitous bandage dress by the designer Maz Azria. On Sunday, July 25, around 3 p.m., three women entered the designer's boutique on West Broadway at seperate times. According to the store clerk interviewed by police, the first woman (30 years old, 5"9" and 225 pounds, wearing blue jeans that exposed a tattoo of a rose on her torso) came in and distracted one of the employees, while a second woman (20 years old and 135 pounds, dressed in gold sandals and a red skirt) entered quietly and removed one of the dresses from the rack. A third woman (40, 5'5", 175 pounds) came in to distract another employee, while the second woman proceeded to take another dress. The three women then exited the store one at a time.

Later, the store employees realized that a Herve Leger denim dress ($2,800) and a Max Azria evening gown ($1,000) were missing.

Peter Som has split up with Creative Design Studios, which has been funding Mr. Som's collections. As a result, the designer will not be putting on a runway show during New York Fashion Week. [WWD]  

Phoebe Philo, who in September 2008 took over as the designer at Celine, is reportedly not getting along with LVMH management. [FWD]

The ecommerce site eLuxury, which is also owned by LVMH, will shut down its retail operations over the next six months to focus on transitioning the Web site into an online luxury magazine. [WWD] 

Versace doesn't plan on lowering its prices to appeal to the masses and instead will keep their price points right where they are to maintain a sense of luxury and exclusivity. [Vogue UK]

He did share that one of PETA’s big targets at the moment is British fashion behemoth Burberry (not showing this week), which “continues to sell fur despite the fact that we met with them months ago and showed them video footage of how animals are bludgeoned to death and skinned alive for their fur,” he said. Michael Kors and Max Azria are also on the PETA persona non grata list. Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and the Gap, on the other hand, have all sworn off fur, he said.

Of perennial PETA target Anna Wintour, Mr. Rice said: “It doesn’t take a creative genius to rip the skin off an animal and dress somebody like a caveman. Editors who still use real fur are a dying breed. The younger generation is largely opposed to it.”

The “sexy policewoman” look was in fact not sexy at all, but otherwise, we were in agreement.