Visionary in White
Her name alone conjures up images of fabulously simple wedding gowns. Brides as glamorous as Sharon Stone and as traditional as Karenna Gore have sought her out for their special days.
Vera Wang has revolutionized the way people look at bridal dresses--transforming them in the last decade from cookie-cutter froufrou concoctions to stylish, couture-look gowns that take into consideration the brides might actually be grown up.
Much has been written about Wang’s own search for a dress in 1989. She had been a senior editor with Vogue for 16 years and was the design director for Ralph Lauren when she was married at 38 to businessman Arthur Becker. The admittedly enthusiastic Studio 54 patron could only find traditional gowns that seemed incompatible with her life. She ended up having a dress made. Just one year after the wedding, she opened Vera Wang Bridal House Ltd. in New York.
Her one-of-a-kind couture wedding dresses start at $20,000. Her ready-to-wear bridal line ranges from $2,200 to $4,800.
We caught up with her a few weeks ago as she was preparing for the fashion shows in New York.
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Question: I’ve read quite a bit about how you yourself couldn’t find a simple plain, beautiful wedding dress and how that kind of got you in the business. But somehow that doesn’t explain to me the energy behind changing the way people look at wedding dresses.
Answer: Well, I mean it’s a simplification of saying that I couldn’t find my own wedding dresses I like. I think what I was really appalled by and shocked by was the lack of taste in bridal. You know it was a very, very formula kind of business . . . the sort of lace with multicolored, iridescent, sequined and fake pearls sewn on the bodice, and a big full skirt and flowers up at your shoulder. If you weren’t in the market for that, there were no other alternatives, unless you had something made or you were wearing a major designer in white. . . .
I really felt that there was an opportunity for me in building a clothing company, a design company, and to start with an area that I had just experienced personally, and to use it as a platform to develop a name and to develop a style and to imply a certain quality to build up a brand name. That’s what really was the motivation behind my going into bridal first.
I now do shoes, I now do evening wear and I now do cashmere sweaters, and I’m on my way to doing handbags, but I think that bridal is my first passion because it enables me to express myself in a way that is perhaps more theatrical in what’s going on in ready-to-wear today. It’s one of the few places where one can be grander, larger than life, more important.
And by that I don’t mean more stuff on the dress.
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Q: Have your silhouettes changed in the last eight years?
A: Bridal in the past was very much a commodity. You know, there’s kind of a look and you just change the necklines, and it never was that for me. I have certain things that have become trademarks, and I’ve seen them so badly copied everywhere that it just makes me crazy. What I’ve tried to do is to take a very different approach, and this particular season it has really been about the cleavage, which was not my signature look. My signature look was high in the front and low in the back.
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Q: That’s what you’ve been famous for.
A: It was always high in the front--sort of monastic--and from the back a touch of flirtation, but this time we really went for focus on the bodice. This particular collection was really about the bodice, about breasts and making them fit high and the waist coming in very, very tight, almost like Louis XVI, you know, and big full skirts, skirts that have as much as 10 yards of fabric in them.
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Q: Let me ask about the “Vera Wang waist.” Often, your dresses give a woman a spectacular figure.
A: Yes.
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Q: Is that waist built into the dress or do women have to wear undergarments?
A: They don’t have to wear undergarments. I think it depends on the girl. If a girl is very, very full-busted, and I mean very full-busted, and very small in the body, she surely needs a lot more support than a girl with an average build. . . . I think what’s really amazing is my sense of proportion. It’s not amazing, but that’s what I focus on.
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Q: How so?
A: I don’t know a woman who doesn’t know her own flaws. You meet her, and within the first 10 seconds she’ll tell you, “You know, my hips are too large or my legs aren’t long enough, or my bust is too big, or my bust is too small, or I don’t have any shoulders, or I hate my upper arms,” so I’m like in there with everybody else. So for that, I’m always trying to compensate in every dress that I do. . . . There will be a dress that’s got a very full skirt where it doesn’t matter what your hips and legs look like. There’ll be a dress that’s done for the busts because you’ve got a great bust.
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Q: That makes a lot of sense just from seeing the way your dresses look on women.
A: Even at the Oscars, for example you know that I dress Holly Hunter, who’s 5 feet 1 and 94 pounds, and I dress Sharon Stone, who’s 5 foot 10 and 130 pounds. . . . Women can come in all different shapes and sizes--short-waisted, long-waisted, and I like to think that the cuts of my dresses, of which no two are ever alike in a given season, is taking that into account. Does that make any sense?
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Q: It makes quite a bit of sense actually. Now I have to quickly ask you about the book that you’re writing (to be published by William Morrow in 2000).
A: The book is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.
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Q: It’s on how to prepare a wedding?
A: Primarily, of course, I’m going to talk about clothing and style and rings and jewelry and hair and makeup and you know all those kinds of great things. But it doesn’t mean that I won’t be talking about the planning of a wedding and giving some real tips. You know, many girls will never wear a Vera Wang, but I certainly am going to give them tips on what my aesthetics are and things I’ve run while planning and executing so many weddings over the past nine years.
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Q: You seem to understand what a bridal gown means to a woman. Can you articulate that?
A: Sure. I think it’s every fantasy we’ve ever had rolled into one. I mean, it’s from the time that we’re little, there is Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty. There is all of that in all of us. And no matter how we are as businesswomen or liberated women. . . . There is in all of us also a romantic side, a sensual side, a passionate side. I think I’ve shifted the looks of weddings from being sort of dumb and--what is the word?--frilly, to having women think about weddings in general.
I think it goes far beyond the dress. I think that it’s passionate, it’s sexual, it’s emotional. I mean, I think women are relating to men more honestly in those ways when they get married and also even as partners. I think that that certainly wasn’t the case years ago. I’ve always felt that the clothing had not grown to the level of the sophistication of people, of human beings.
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Q: That’s real interesting.
A: If you want to be really blunt, I think now . . . the whole wedding market looks like 200% better because of us. I don’t want to take the credit single-handedly, but I don’t know anyone else who could take the credit except for us.
It’s a very exciting time for me because there’s a lot of competition now. I mean, everyone thinks it’s a money-making business and everyone thinks that it’s an easy business. I think they should stay in it for a while and see.
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Q: It’s also a one-shot business.
A: It’s a one-shot business, and I’ve got to be very honest, it’s non-repeat. The other part about it is that it’s service.
It’s service-oriented particularly since I’m also a retailer. . . . Many brides take up to three [two-hour] appointments before they even choose.
It’s a business of love and passion, and for me it was the cornerstone I chose to build a fashion business off of.
It will always be my first love. I love doing it, and I am up to the competition. Let’s put it this way, I’m moving on, and I think that’s important to say because [the next line] will be reflective of the clothes you see in California.
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Q: In what way?
A: Some of the clothes are quite ornate, but they’re once again ornate in a modern way. They’re not ornate just to be ornate. We didn’t put flowers and beads and fringe and sequins just because we wanted to load it on. . . . It’s always extremely deliberate, and it’s extremely designed.
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Q: You were one of the first to use colors in bridal wear.
A: Everyone’s copied us with color. I must say, horrifyingly sometimes. . . . What they didn’t realize was when we did color there were also three shades of tissue-weight fabric all layered very deliberately to create a certain kind of color which had a transparency to it. It wasn’t just color to do a pink dress, if you catch my drift.
I am not a bridal company trying to do fashion. We are a fashion company that’s primary interest and focus is on bridal. Does that make sense?
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Q: That makes perfect sense. It explains why you’ve been able to sort of vault this industry to such a different level.
A: It’s because I brought 25, unfortunately 30 years, of fashion experience and real fashion doing the couture in Paris and photographing it for Ralph Lauren. . . . I’m a fashion maven or junkie or addict or whatever you want to call it. Then I’ve turned all that knowledge and energy toward weddings, and that’s what makes it different. And that’s why the copies will never look like the originals.
It took this heroic energy and passion and everything for design and for all things visual . . . to motivate people out of the 1940s. There was a warp that kind of got [stuck] in 1949.
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Q: Now do you think that we’ll go back to that, that there’ll sort of be a retro movement?
A: I thought it did go back to that this time but in a new way. I don’t think we’ll ever go back again to that.
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Q: I remember when I was a cub reporter writing bridal announcements and writing about the dress and thinking, “Oh, gosh, why would you put yourself in this?”
A: You’re right. There were all of you out there. I was thinking of you. . . . I have this incredible ability to identify with my clients. And I think that’s why my book is going be interesting, because it’s about having been there myself. And it’s firsthand. It’s firsthand because when I take on a wedding myself for [for example] Sharon Stone or Holly Hunter or Uma Thurman, I am living it with them.
I must enter into their mind, I jmean, to their essence. That’s what it takes. . . . I don’t know that any article’s ever stated, that as a fashion editor at Vogue you have to enter into the spirit of a Prada or a Gucci. When you do those pictures, you must understand the inherent philosophy of those companies. . . . You must understand when you photograph the very essence of who those designers are--like Helmut’s [Lang] hipness, Chanel’s couture-ness, you know Prada’s inventiveness and artistry. If you can’t enter into that, you can’t do pictures.
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Q: Now you dressed Barbie.
A: Barbie was hard to do because they were very decided about what they wanted Barbie to be for me. I loved the way she turned out.
[Wang has also designed an Awards Night Barbie.]
I have a third one coming out, which will be my ready-to-wear Barbie [in evening wear]. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m thinking matte jersey. . . . It’s a great honor; it’s a huge privilege. It is my childhood dream come true. I never dreamed I’d ever do a Barbie, and it’s just one of the best, most terrific things that’s ever happened to me.
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Q: That’s great.
A: It’s every girl’s fantasy, right?
Brides who wore Vera Wang
Sharon Stone
Holly Hunter
Uma Thurman
Mariah Carey
Karenna Gore
