Background

Mrs. Wang was born on June 27, 1949 in New York, United States. She belonged to a family of affluent Chinese immigrants, who came to the United States in the mid-1940s. Her father, Cheng Ching Wang (Wang Chengqing), owned a company of medicines and mother, Florence Wu (Wu Chifang), used to work for United Nations as a translator. Her maternal grandfather is Fengtian clique warlord Wu Junsheng, who was killed by the Empire of Japan in the Huanggutun incident in 1928. Mrs. Wang has one younger brother, Kenneth.

Education

Vera Wang graduated in 1967 from the Chapin School and studied at University of Paris. Moreover, she went to Sarah Lawrence College and attained a Bachelor in Art History degree in 1971.

From the age of six, Mrs. Wang started figure skating and while she was in high school competed in the United States Figure Skating Championship in 1968. In the same year, Sports Illustrated featured Vera Wang in their Faces in the Crowd issue. When she failed to become a part of the US Olympics team, she diverted her attention towards the fashion industry.

Career

Upon her graduation from college, in 1971, Mrs. Wang shelved her skating career and began working for Vogue magazine. Within a year, at the age of 23, she was promoted to senior fashion editor. She held that title for the next 15 years. In 1987, she left Vogue to take a job as design director for accessories at Ralph Lauren.

In the year of 1990, with some financial backing from her father, Vera Wang opened her own bridal boutique in the upscale Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue in New York City. Catering mostly to celebrities and socialites, the Vera Wang Bridal House initially offered couture gowns by the famed designers Guy Laroche, Arnold Scaasi, Carolina Herrera, and Christian Dior. Over the next few years, she honed her skills as a fashion designer and eventually launched a signature collection of streamlined and sophisticated bridal wear.

Vera Wang has designed bridal gowns for various elite figures like Chelsea Clinton, Campbell Brown, Mariah Carey, Avril Lavigne, Victoria Beckham, Hillary Duff, Kim Kardashian & who not. Her evening wear was worn by First Lady Michelle Obama. Her plush evening wear comes under the title of "Vera Wang Made to Order".

Mrs. Wang first received international attention during the 1994 Olympics when she designed a hand-beaded ensemble for figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. She has since introduced an equally popular line of elegant evening wear, as well as Vera Wang Made to Order - a collection of couture designs that are available exclusively at the Manhattan boutique.

By 1995, her business was bringing in sales of about $10 million, due in part to her growing eveningwear collection. The evening dresses sold extremely well at such upscale stores as Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus, and later Nordstrom, frequently outselling other designers. Spurred by her success, Vera Wang decided to enter the designer bridesmaid dress market. She introduced a collection of nearly three dozen pieces in the spring of 1996, featuring unique fabrics, styles, and muted colors.

In addition to increasing the size and scope of her collections, Vera Wang opened more shops to keep up with a growing demand. Small in-store Wang boutiques were located in Barneys bridal department in both Chicago, Illinois, and Beverly Hills, California; others opened inside bridal marts in Nashville, Tennessee, and Seattle, Washington. Mrs. Wang's second full-sized bridal boutique opened in early 1996 in Washington, D.C.'s famed Watergate apartment and shopping complex.

By 1997, Mrs. Wang was everywhere. She dressed a who's who list of celebrities attending such high-profile events as the inauguration party marking President Bill Clinton's (1946) reelection, the Golden Globe awards, and the Academy Awards. Vera Wang also entered into a partnership with Italian shoe company Rossimoda to develop a line of women's dress shoes to go with her evening gowns and bridal designs. An important element to her footwear designs was a slim platform heel, which made Mrs. Wang's customers appear taller and slimmer. She offered a wide variety of comfortable, stylish shoes in satin, velvet, and suede, as well as specially designed fabric pumps that could be dyed to match wedding or bridesmaid dresses.

Vera Wang hit a milestone in April 1998 when she presented her eveningwear collection at a New York fashion show for the first time. At a fashion show, various models wear clothes that were created by a specific designer and walk down a raised platform, called a runway or catwalk. The show was a success and Mrs. Wang's collection was well received by store buyers and fashion critics alike. She then opened her first full-sized boutique inside Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco, California, in July. Although she had bridal shops within other upscale retailers, this was her first boutique besides the original store in New York City to carry both bridal and eveningwear collections, as well as accessories and shoes. In 1999, Mrs. Wang signed her second licensing agreement, with the Newmont Group, for leather and furs to accent some of her finest gowns.

Her success led to greater social and professional responsibility as well. She turned her fall 1999 show, in Miami Beach, Florida, into a fund-raiser for two AIDS organizations, and months later was elected to the board of the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America.

In 2000, as her company celebrated ten years in business, two major events took place. The first was an alliance with Unilever Prestige, a division of personal-care products giant Unilever, for Vera Wang to create and market a signature fragrance. The second concerned Mrs. Wang's store in New York, which would undergo a major renovation while the space next to it, which had been newly acquired, would be transformed into a new boutique featuring her bridesmaid collection, footwear selections, and her growing line of accessories.

In 2001, she launched her first fragrance and published a highly anticipated wedding guide. By 2001, industry analysts estimated that the Vera Wang Bridal House and its shops were selling more than ten thousand custom-made wedding gowns each year, priced from $2,000 to more than $30,000 each. Over the years her business has continued to grow. Signing its first ever licensing agreement, Wedgewood Waterford USA, the premier china and crystal producer, signed with Mrs. Wang in 2001 to develop a collection of sophisticated tableware, decorative vases, wine glasses, and goblets.

The year 2002 was one of significant accomplishment for Vera Wang. Her company now operated two factories, one in Florida and one in Ohio, along with dozens of boutiques to keep up with the ever widening range of Vera Wang merchandise. Her shoe line had also received a considerable boost.

After the original licensing agreement with Rossimoda expired, Mrs. Wang signed with Stuart Weitzman, one of the most respected names in the footwear industry. In February the designer's long awaited fragrance, Vera Wang, was launched. It arrived at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York on Valentine's Day and was an immediate success. The unique, femininely shaped bottles flew off the counters and shelves, breaking a record for the highest sales of a new perfume at Saks. Prices ranged from $300 for a full ounce to $65 for a smaller spray bottle.

In 2006, Vera Wang reached a deal with Kohl's, a chain of department stores, to produce a less expensive line of ready-to-wear clothing exclusively for them called Simply Vera. "White by Vera Wang" launched on February 11, 2011, at David's Bridal. Prices of the bridal gowns range from $600 to $1,400 which gives more brides a more affordable way to wear Vera's designs. In spring of 2012, Mrs. Wang teamed up with Men's Wearhouse to offer two tuxedo styles available in both the retail and rental areas of their inventory. In June 2012, she expanded in Australia with the opening of "Vera Wang Bride Sydney" and her first Asian flagship store "Vera Wang Bridal Korea", helmed by President Jung Mi-ri, in upmarket neighborhood Cheongdam-dong in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

From a bridal boutique in New York to a design empire worth an estimated $80 million, Vera Wang has come a long way in a relatively short time. The energetic designer, however, is far from finished. She would like to develop additional product lines including jewelry, purses, lingerie, swimsuits, athletic apparel, and prom dresses. Apart from this, Vera Wang has been a part of the popular culture by being mentioned and appearing in many television shows and movies such as in Sex and the City (film and series), The West Wing, Ugly Betty, Bride Wars, and Totally Spies.

Achievements

• 

  A Vera Wang creation is to the bridal industry what Jaguar is to the luxury car market - both are recognized immediately for their elegance and are unrivaled in beauty and distinction. Her major achievements include first in industry to successfully fuse high style and fashion with the tradition and symbolism of the bridal industry. Along the way, the Mrs. Wang name came to mean top quality and originality. She has designed wedding and red carpet gowns for Hollywood's elite, such as: Chelsea Clinton, Karenna Gore, Ivanka Trump, Campbell Brown, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Victoria Beckham, etc.
  
  She has been numerously awarded for her works. In 2005, she was presented with an award for the year’s designer for women from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In 2009, she was honored for her design contributions to the sport of skating. After twenty years of opening her first bridal couture shop, the Radcliffe-Harvard Asian American Association presented Vera Wang with the Leadership in Arts Award in 2010. In 2013, Mrs. Wang was honored with the Geoffery Beene Award for lifetime achievement.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Vera Wang On Weddings

• design

  • Sketch of a ceremony dress

  • Dinner dress: the sketch

  • Hillary Scott's Custom Vera Wang wedding gown sketch

  • Vera Wang gown

  • Vera Wang Manon - bridal spring collection

  • Vera Wang sketch

  • Vera Wang sketch

  • Vera Wang sketch

  • Vera Wang's colorful couture sketch

  • Vera Wang's sketch for Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Views

Quotations: "When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great."

"As the mother of two daughters, I have great respect for women. And I don't ever want to lose that."

"All those years of skating and dancing have carried over. I can't design anything without thinking of how a woman's body will look and move when she's wearing it."

"The key is falling in love with something, anything. If your heart's attached to it, then your mind will be attached to it."

"Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way."

"When you have a passion for something then you tend not only to be better at it, but you work harder at it too."

"A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes."

"A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes."

"It takes tremendous will to compete in any athletic endeavor, so it meant going to bed early and getting my homework done in advance. I had to sacrifice things, like a social life, to be a skater at 15. But I loved skating so much that it was worth everything to me."

"To me, eyewear goes way beyond being a prescription. It's like makeup. It's the most incredible accessory. The shape of a frame or the color of lenses can change your whole appearance."

Personality

Vera Wang loves sports and exercise. She spends her day dealing with all the different lines of product she handles, from poring over china patterns to small leather goods at Kohl's. She usually doesn't take phone calls during the day.

Connections

Vera Wang married Arthur Becker on June 22, 1989. They resided in Manhattan with their two adopted daughters: Cecilia (born 1990), who currently lives in New York City, and Josephine (born 1993), who attended The Chapin School and currently attends Harvard University. Mr. Becker was the CEO of the information technology services company NaviSite until August 2010. In July 2012, it was announced that the couple had separated. The separation was amicable.

Father:

Cheng Ching Wang (Wang Chengqing)

Mother:

Florence Wu (Wu Chifang)

husband:

Arthur Becker

Daughter:

Cecilia Becker

Daughter:

Josephine Becker

Grandfather:

Wu Junsheng

Brother:

Kenneth Wang

References

• Vera Wang: Enduring Style (USA Today Lifeline Biographies)
• Vera Wang (A&E Biography)
• Vera Wang (Asian Americans of Achievement)
• Vera Wang: Fashion Designer (Influential Asians)
• Vera Wang (Profiles in Fashion)
• Vera Wang Queen of Fashion; Amazing Chinese American (Biographies of Amazing Asian Americans) (Biographies of Amazing Asian Americans)