(FORTUNE Magazine) – FOR CHRISTMAS a year ago, former Max Factor president Linda Wachner wanted a $905-million present: Revlon's cosmetics and perfume business. She wanted it so badly that she spent Christmas day in her room at Manhattan's Helmsley Palace Hotel reviewing closing documents for a buyout of the beauty unit. But her group lost out when Pantry Pride's Ronald Perelman stepped in and bought all of Revlon for $1.8 billion (see preceding article). Undeterred, Wachner, 40, embarked on another takeover attempt within weeks. This time she succeeded. She spearheaded a leveraged buyout of Warnaco, an apparel business headquartered in Bridgeport, Connecticut. On April 28, Wachner stepped in as president of the 113-year-old company and became one of the very few women heading a FORTUNE 500 company. Says she: ''I'm having a wonderful time.'' Having worked at Warnaco a decade earlier as vice president of Warner's bra division, Wachner was eager to have the company to herself. She had targeted it for a buyout as early as 1984 because it was not performing up to potential. Warnaco (1986 sales: $575 million) possesses some sterling brand names: Christian Dior, Geoffrey Beene, and Chaps by Ralph Lauren, not to mention Hathaway shirts, Pringle sweaters, and Olga bras. But Warnaco managers ran the brands like autonomous companies, with overlapping functions, high overhead, and sloppy controls. They also paid more attention to manufacturing than to marketing. Wachner promptly installed her own managers and reorganized the company into seven divisions. For example, Chaps by Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, and the man in the Hathaway shirt now all belong to the menswear division. Annual savings: $12 million. She also weeded out slow-selling lines to cut inventory costs. Annual savings: $30 million. Informed before she took over that Warnaco operated nine outlet stores for overruns and seconds, Wachner was suprised to learn the number was actually 58. In a consolidation drive, she plans to close as many as 15. Running her own show pays Wachner a salary of $500,000 a year. She is also due a portion of the $24-million legal settlement her backers won from Perelman as part of the busted Revlon deal. Her day begins when she arises at 5:30 at her room in the Helmsley (she also has an apartment in Los Angeles dating back to her Max Factor job), calls in a hairdresser, and devours the morning papers. A couple of times a week she takes a 55-mile limo ride to Bridgeport, but she is in the process of moving her office to Manhattan to get closer to some of Warnaco's divisions and the rest of the apparel industry. During her first three weeks on the job, she visited nearly all of Warnaco's 24 plants and dropped in at some Paris fashion shows. ''I don't mind sleeping on planes,'' she says. A widow since 1983, when her husband of 11 years died at 68, Wachner spends weekends walking the streets of New York in her Reeboks (she is on the Reebok International board) to see what the competition is selling. Her favorite spots: the pocket-size boutiques on Madison Avenue. What Wachner says she would really like to do on weekends is work behind the counter in a department store. ''That's the only way you learn,'' she says. At the height of the Christmas selling season, she dragged three Warnaco executives into New York for a day of shopping at Bloomingdale's so they could get a firsthand feel for the retail action. Wachner has big plans for Warnaco, which she wants to make the ''foremost apparel conglomerate in the world.'' She has already boosted operating earnings 35%, to $65 million. Profits have been slower to respond because of write-offs. She is also trying to make her brands more fashionable. Recently she hired Jack Cassidy, president of marketing at Lily of France, to put some romance into the lingerie line. Within five years she hopes to boost Warnaco's sales by a third and double operating earnings. As she did in 1985, Wachner will spend Christmas Eve with Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown and her husband, movie producer David Brown. But there will be no lonely Christmas day at the Helmsley. Wachner will visit her 82-year-old mother in Los Angeles. Then she is treating herself to a ski vacation in Aspen.