Taking China: Vera Wang's Long March
November 17, 2005 | Elif SUNGUR
Vera Wang is known for her American bridal empire.
But in Shanghai she achieved recognition that her parents could never have imagined when they left their native China for a new life in 1947.
Wang received the China Fashion Award or CFA as International Fashion Designer of the Year.
Born in New York in 1949, she has become the first designer with Chinese roots to be globally recognized.
Wang, 56, also opened on Sunday a bridal boutique, The Perfect Wedding, in Shanghai's Pudong Shangri-La hotel.
It offers back to her heritage the stylish, serene, softly colored outfits that have brought a new sophistication to the white wedding world.
And she is getting to know the ever-changing city, where her father, the son of the war minister under Chiang Kai-shek, brought her back to his hometown for the first time two years ago.
"He showed me tradition, the Ming empire, what another China was," she says.
"I saw modern China.
I expected bicycles and Mao suits and what I saw was a pre-Tokyo China with a hunger for Western culture.
It is a wonderfully exciting period.
It's so fascinating."
Wang's career has been a chameleon change from a childhood as a competitive figure skater (who ultimately dressed Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Olympics) to her fashion empire of today.
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