By Dana Thomas

“I don’t mind having people over,” said the actress, makeup spokeswoman, and fashion designer Milla Jovovich, “but I put everything valuable away just in case.” That was last September when the choppy-haired, milky-skinned Jovovich and her equally ravishing design partner Carmen Hawk threw a party for their proto-hippie-girl Spring 2007 line in Jovovich’s four-story brownstone in the far-flung West Village.

“People,” of course, included such bold-faced rebels as Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton, so really anything could have happened to the well-appointed, European-vintage chic surroundings, right down to the crushed-velvet chairs, Oriental rugs, and multiple marble fireplaces. But 300 revelers and countless caiparhinas later, midnight came and went, and all of the possessions remained mostly intact. “I just want to sit down and talk to Carmen about everything that went on today,” said an exhausted Jovovich, getting back to business, which is what the fete was always about.

“Business,” however, for the design team of Jovovich-Hawk, is mostly housed and conducted in their Los Angeles showroom—a far cry from the Jovovich manse. And on a cool day in late December, she and Hawk sit on the beat-up sofa of their Cahuenga Boulevard studio in the heart of Hollywood, sucking down American Spirits like a pair of beatniks. Both are dressed simply: Jovovich in an old, blue wool jumper over a faded tee; Hawk in a gray T-shirt, jeans and pearls. Neither wears a stitch of make-up.

“You should have seen this place before we redid it,” Hawk says, motioning with her long, languid arms at the storefront space, jammed with racks of clothes, bolts of floral-print fabrics, a big coffee table piled with beaded purses, art-and-photography books, empty coffee cups, and yes, an overflowing ashtray. “It used to be a Thai jewelry wholesale place. They sold in bulk. It was like an orange Thai palace...” “…with crazy molded shelves and everything,” adds Jovovich.

“We just gutted it and did it as minimalist as possible,” says Hawk. The studio is the heart of Jovovich-Hawk, the women’s wear line the pair launched in 2003. The look is retro and modern at the same time: slim, bias-cut ’30s silhouettes with small flounces, smock tops in islet and lace, sheer baby doll dresses with soft ruffled trim. “Our clothes definitely have an old-worldness,” says Jovovich. “They have that charm from another time.” They have a lot of intellectual references, too: The bluebird embroidered on a shirt is a nod to a Charles Bukowski poem. The black silk dress with halter neck is named “Gigi” after the film. A retro one-piece swimsuit is called “Esther” (as in Williams).

“It’s wearable and emotional,” says Hawk.

“Character-driven,” says Jovovich.

“But not spectacle,” adds Hawk.

“Right. It’s not a costume,” concludes Jovovich.

For Hawk, starting a fashion company was a natural progression. A river rat from Clarksville, Missouri—“near Hannibal, it’s very Mark Twain”—the tall, lithe blonde got into modeling at sixteen while visiting friends in London. Within a few years, she was a muse for designer Alexander McQueen. “Remember that show where the models walked on water?” she asks, referring to McQueen’s 1997 landmark ready-to-wear presentation.

“She opened that show,” Jovovich pipes in.

Jovovich needs less of an introduction. She had been a fashion girl since she was a kid. She was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1975 to a physician named Bogdanovich Jovovich and his Russian actress wife, Galina. In 1980, the family immigrated to Sacramento, California, where Jovovich’s father did odd jobs like carpentering. “You do what you can,” she explains. The family eventually settled in Los Angeles, where her father returned to medicine, and her mother, to acting. At age nine Jovovich began acting, and at eleven, she was photographed by Richard Avedon for a Revlon campaign. Over the years, she modeled, played electric guitar, and sang in a rock band called Plastic Has Memory. Most notably, though, she began starring in such hip films as French director (and former husband) Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element and Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil. (Her haunting, ethereal cover of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love” can be heard in Wim Wenders’s The Million Dollar Hotel, in which she also co-starred with Mel Gibson.

Hawk and Jovovich first met in Paris through a mutual friend in the mid-1990s. “In a café, remember?” Jovovich asks. “We hung out with the same sort of people and had the same sort of take on life,” says Hawk. “We’d do our own thing—music or art.”“Carmen is an amazing painter,” says Jovovich.They became instant friends—the sort that finish each other’s sentences.

In the early 2000s, Hawk was designing a clothing line. “Mostly shirts,” Hawk explains, “one of a kind, named after songs.”

“Any cool girl in L.A. was wearing them,” says Jovovich. “Like me!”

The pair decided to join forces and create a fashion company. They went to International Silks & Woolens in Los Angeles, and bought beautiful old fabrics at $150 a yard. “The man who sold them to us was weeping,” remembers Hawk. “He told us he’d bought those fabrics himself in Paris in the 1950s and we were taking the last bits of it.”

They sewed the samples in Hawk’s living room and Jovovich’s bedroom. Their friend Chris Brenner, a musician and model scout, took the dresses to Fred Segal, where they sold out—at a loss—for $2,500 a piece. The girls did another collection, and another, and started presenting in a showroom in New York. Each season, sales doubled. But it was, as Jovovich explained it, “guerilla designing”—really a seat-of-the-pants affair. One season, when their manufacturing plans fell apart weeks before their presentation, they flew to the Ukraine and had the samples made by local seamstresses. Hawk was so exhausted by the adventure she wound up in a local hospital.

It was a good lesson. They sent their design assistant to India to find a factory to produce the line. The company produces in China, too. “We were careful to make sure there was no child labor,” Hawk says. Jovovich and Hawk put out four collections a year—big ones for fall and spring, smaller capsules for summer and winter, which are available in more than 100 stores, including Barneys New York, Nordstrom, Fred Segal, and Harvey Nichols. Until now, Jovovich’s movie career underwrote the company, which has a sales turnover of nearly $1 million annually. “We haven’t needed to look for exterior investment or sell off a bulk of our company,” Jovovich explains. “It’s ours and it’s solid.” Nevertheless, they’ve decided to get serious about finances. “We’ve hired a bookkeeper, which is genius because we’ll be on a budget,” Jovovich says brightly.

“Failure,” says Hawk, “is not an option.”

Photography by Marcelo Krasilcic