STRAIGHT TALK
By Jeffrey Zaslow
Issue date:
May 8-10, 1997
Wang's sleek styles rescued American brides from looking "like the bride on top of a cake," she says.
Vera Wang:
The fashion designer creates alluring bridal gowns Hollywood wears down the aisle. Her advice for '90s brides: "You can be sensual on your wedding day."
 or Vera Wang, best known for sexy gowns worn by celebrity brides like Mariah Carey and Sharon Stone, one wedding is foremost in her mind: her own. "It was fabulous," she says of her 1989 wedding to golf equipment manufacturer Arthur Becker. There were 400 guests from the worlds of film, fashion and media.
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New line: The dress above is from Wang's spring-summer bridal collection. Some of the gowns have pearl straps and collars.
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Like Wang, her four bridesmaids were mature, high-powered career women. They felt foolish all wearing the same dress. "It was very difficult. They kept saying they felt like the Supremes," says Wang, 48, who learned a lesson she now shares with clients: Know your age. If you're an older bride, don't expect "the same kind of celebration as when you're younger."The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Wang fell for fashion as a teenage competitive ice skater with gorgeous costumes and unfulfilled Olympic dreams. Once off the ice, she satisfied her artistic ambitions as a Vogue editor and design director for Ralph Lauren. She opened her first bridal salon in 1990, has since branched into evening wear, and now has annual revenue of about $20 million. (Her ready-to-wear wedding dresses average $3,500, including alterations.) A fast-talking workaholic with daughters 4 and 7, Wang bubbles with confidence. Before "we brought sexuality to weddings," she says, most brides "looked like the bride on top of a cake, very decorated." Her gowns make her clients feel sexy, she says, so even if their marriages fizzle, they turn to her for the next trip down the aisle. She dresses repeat customers in "right," if not white, dresses, like the pale pink chiffon gown the twice-wed Stone wore at her February wedding. Wang realizes many people view weddings with trepidation. Gut it out, she advises. "I have a pillow in one of my houses that says 'Don't elope!' on it. Having a wedding is like finishing high school. If you don't do it, you'll always regret it."
Photo Credit: Joyce Ravid for USA WEEKEND
ASK WANG FOR ADVICE
Vera Wang will write or call a reader who seeks advice. By May 17, write to "Straight Talk," P.O. Box 3455, Chicago, Ill. 60654 (fax: 312-661-0375; e-mail: talk@usaweekend.com).
The dream gown may not work:
"I ask brides, 'How are you getting married?' rather than 'What's your fantasy?' Are you marrying in a church, a restaurant, a tent? Will there be 80 people? 500? What time of year? A dress must be tailored to the hows, wheres and whens. Then you try to marry the fantasy to the reality."
"If you're getting married in a modern dress, you don't need gloves.''
Long trains are for hauling freight:
A gown with a long train can turn a bride into "a parked car with nowhere to move," says Wang, who nonetheless fulfilled singer Mariah Carey's request for a 28-footer at her 1993 wedding.
Men: When a woman tries on dresses for you ...
"If she doesn't look good, be honest -- in a nice way. Say, 'Honey, I don't think any of these flatter you enough.' "
Zaslow is an advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times Co.
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