Biography of Vera Wong

Text: Polina Sadovnikova years, and most star brides continue to trust wedding outfits only to one woman - Vera Wong. Today, Polina Sadovnikova pays tribute to the designer, whose name has become almost synonymous with wedding dresses of dreams in fashion and pop culture. Autumn, Vera Wong, she only prepares for the selection in the US team in figure skating, but mentally already packing her suitcases in Grenoble, the capital of the Winter Olympiad, and expects to bring home a gold medal.

Alas, the dreams of a brilliant sports career are not destined to come true - Wong is not even taken to the team. Having gathered with the spirit after the failure, she urgently reviews plans for the future and tells her parents that she wants to study for a designer. There was nothing surprising in this decision - the fashion was the same integral part of the growing up faith, like figure skating.

In her mother, Florence Wu, who for a long time worked as a translator at the UN, often took her daughter for shows Christian Dior and Schuber de Zhivanshi - money and status allowed her to be one of the beloved clients of the houses and the guest on their show. Unlike most Chinese immigrants in the United States, Vera’s parents were both grandfathers - Chinese generals, one of whom was even a military minister in the government of Chan Kayshi.

Although the wongs did not deny themselves anything, they did not indulge in faith at home, accustomed to hard work and self -discipline. So, the words of the daughter of “I want to be a designer” Father Chang Ching Wong, a co -owner of the US Summit multimillion -dollar corporation, rated: “If you really want to get into a fashionable industry, prove it [to start] find a job.” The first real working proposal - with an office, a schedule and a salary - turned up to Vera Wong by accident.

Once, in M, in the Yves Saint Laurent boutique on Madison Avenue, where she trained as a seller-consultant, Francis Patika Styin, a stylist and fashion director of American Vogue, working with Hound and Kelvin Klein. Vera Wong, then a student of the private New York Humanitarian College Sarah Lawrence, helped Miss Stein to decide on the purchase and heard in response: “Call you how to finish your studies.” Wong called back a little earlier, two years later.

The flock “for some reason remembered her” and called to the post of temporary assistant editor of Vogue. Vera really took this position temporarily: everything unfolded so rapidly that soon, in M, Wong became the youngest editor of Vogue Fashion, at the age of 23 years. Over time, Vera Wong became a noticeable figure in the industry, not only thanks to the editorial authority, but also due to a recognizable uniform - the Yves Saint Laurent black tuxedo, which, in combination with the shock of the brown hair, Wong has always struck.

But even in the forefront of fashion shows, she did not feel in her place-and yet she decided to return to the designer's career as a dreamer's career. The most horror to Vera, like all Vogue employees, was inspired by the legendary stylist Polly Melllen. According to Wong, the editors were trembling even before Melllen left the elevator. In the iconic documentary about the backstage of the gloss “Vogue: through the eyes of the editor” Vera called her former boss a bitch what later, however, she repented, but admitted that it was Polly Melllen who instilled her love of black color and taught to organize the shooting, which was very useful in design work.

So, a year, Vera 38 years old, and she decided to re -profiled from the editor who writes about designers, to the designer, about whom all editors will write. She had already found a job at that time of the New York fashion designer Jeffrey Bin, when she suddenly received an offer from Ralph Lauren. Wong spent the next two years in the walls of his fashion house as a design director.

The work of the “most American of all American designers” so in one of the interviews Vera called her former boss taught Miss Wong to adhere to a single aesthetics and bend her line without looking at fashion trends. The new round of the career of Vera Wong happened in m. This time, a fateful proposal - hands and heart - came from the American developer Arthur P. The bride immediately went in search of a wedding dress.

True, it took more time than planned. I was and I realized that I did not see myself in any of the outfits [which were sold in stores], ”recalled Wong. Ralph Lauren also had no question of ordering a dress - Vera was afraid that her ideas about an ideal wedding outfit would not coincide with the ideas of the boss and preparation for the celebration would turn into a search for a new job.

I had to take the business in his own hands - literally: under the crown of Wong went in a simple cut dress with sequins on the bodice, which was sewn according to her own sketch. Realizing thanks to his own wedding that the niche of wedding dresses for brides older is free, Vera Wong decided that it was time to launch his own brand. But despite the connection of the designer in the industry, there was no investors.

Father came to the rescue - he agreed to take financing and become the chairman of the company.True, with one condition: no line of patch-a-port, only wedding dresses. Vera Wong accepted the proposal, but in the year, after the death of her father, she still released the first collection of Ready-to-Wear. So today they come to Wong not only for wedding dresses, but also for everyday clothes of a girl of various ages - and after 30, on which the designer was initially guided, and before.

Over the years that have passed since the opening of the first Vera Wang salon in M ​​in the New York Hotel “Carlisle”, Vera Wong won an honorary place in the list of the most popular designers not only wedding dresses, but also for red-draws. However, the designer herself became a star. In addition to the documentary "September number" and "Vogue: through the eyes of the editor," she appeared in Camo in the series, for example, in "Sex in the Bolshoi City" and "Betty Betty".

Yes, and a rare film on wedding topics is without mentioning faith Wong - to recall at least the Romk “War of Brides”, in which the heroine Anne Hathaway selflessly declares: “It is not the dress of Faith Vong that they move for themselves, but themselves under the dress.” The frame from the film "War of Brides" to such attention Vera Wong, it seems, is only glad. In her 74 she creates several collections a year, invents costumes for the skaters Wong and periodically goes to the ice - works on a new more democratic line of dresses along with the Spanish wedding giant Pronovias, continues to decorate stars for weddings and red paths.

And he will also be willingly sharing with the army of fans of his unique style and beauty with bold images we still remember her instagram-outing on the fiery-orange Jacquemus la Robe Manosque and the secrets of eternal youth, the main of which sounds like this: “Work, sleep, a cocktail with vodka and little sun”. But that's not all. The designer leads Tiktok at times more actively than the peers and demonstrates the wardrobe treasures to subscribers.

All the wealth of faith barely fits in the luxurious apartments in Manhattan, which she inherited from her parents. In m, responding to the Proust questionnaire for Vanity Fair, Vera Wong admitted: she regrets most of all that she had not built a film director's career. Well, knowing her habit of fulfilling the plan, we are betting when waiting for the premiere and how many times in the picture the pop cultural “Vera Wang” will sound.