Vera Wang Musings

I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes, where a woman's personality and sense of self are revealed.

I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman.

-Vera Wang

Born in New York City in 1949, Vera Wang has been everything from a figure skater to a senior fashion editor at Vogue. Yet Vera Wang has truly achieved fame in the last twenty years as a fashion designer who is known for her wedding gowns. Indeed Wang’s designs in their simplicity and elegance are sought after by women of all backgrounds and have walked down the aisle on the likes of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton.

"When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business."-Vera Wang

Though I do not have the intention of marrying anytime soon, I’ve always enjoyed admiring wedding gowns, especially Mrs. Wang’s. For this reason I subscribed to Vera Wang’s RSVP club Newsletter a while back, in each edition Wang selects a recent gown design and discusses the inspiration behind it and the thought process she went through in choosing materials for the gown.

Interestingly enough, Wang confesses that the original sketches of each gown often dictate what materials she uses. She claims to be able to look at a sketch and just know what material is being depicted despite the fact that all of the sketches share a similar line-drawing appearance. After reviewing her sketches (keeping in mind the depiction of lace on the sketch Didi was added after Wang 'felt' the material to be lace) I can understand what she means.

For instance, the image below of the dress “Didi” and its following sketch:

May be compared to "Amelia" and its original sketch:

Perhaps the "feeling" that Vera gets is more practicality, indeed it would be hard to create swirling florets like those on "Amelia" in stiff satin, thus chiffon and silk were employed. Regardless I love how Wang romanticizes everything, from the idea that each dress has a spirit to the notion that each gown is perfectly designed to be one bride's true match.