Vera Wang | Full Q&A | Oxford Union

[Music] [Music] thank you I didn't hear what he said so I'm presuming it was good so let's start straight with more questions at the start of your career so immediately upon graduating from Sarah Lawrence College you were hired as an editor at Vogue magazine as I said the youngest editor at that magazine in such a competitive industry what do you think made you stand out and how were the first few years of your career I'm gonna be really honest I think it was luck I'd like to say I was deserving or that I was something extraordinary and that would not be true I was very influenced by fashion when I went to the Sorbonne my junior year in college and I fell in love with fashion and I happen to meet some amazing young women that work for French Vogue so I didn't really know what an editor was or did I'd absolutely no idea and I know that when I get got back to New York I really wanted to be a designer and my father paid for so much tuition to get me through undergrad short that he said I'm just not gonna do that anymore if you think you really want to be in fashion go get a job and I ended up working as a salesgirl at each seller wrong and I was sort of discovered by this woman named Frances Pataki Stein it was quite historic in fashion American fashion because she not only was fashion director of American Vogue she also went on to be creative director of Calvin Klein and then after that she had a storied career now in Paris and she created all the accessories for almost 30 years alongside Carl and so she was sort of the person discovered me and when I sold her pair of pants or blazer I don't quite remember but he'd sell them wrong she said when you get out of college give me a call and I will hire you at Vogue and I told my mother and I said just said to a room earlier that I said to my mother I'm really excited I'm gonna get a job at Vogue and she said no you're not no one's gonna hire you and I said no I I think I am and she said no you're not but what I realized so when I got out of college I called her actually she really did remember me and I really got the job but the truth is I really wanted to go Design School and my father would not pay for any more education it was more about working and I think that something I say to a lot of young people who want to be in fashion that you should work for somebody you respect and if you can't get that then you should just work for someone in fashion if you really want it and then you'll know whether you really want to be in fashion or not because you may think you want to be but until you really work you don't know and also it really it's great to be paid to learn it's a wonderful thing to learn and somebody actually hands you a paycheck and I think that's one of the great things that the great piece of advice I can give to any young person wants to be in any industry is get paid to learn so in my case I ended up at Vogue and it was grueling I don't know if any of you have seen The Devil Wears Prada are you too young to remember that film you probably are too young to remember that but in any event it was a very sort of light version of life at Vogue was like vogue light vogue is a place that bears like like your so much history I think that anyone who is educated about fashion would have been educated partially by Vogue magazine and by Conde Nast for the last hundred years so being there enabled me to really have an education that you could not get anywhere else the level of photographers makeup artists hair stylist designers clothing there's nothing in the world not accessible to you when you work at Vogue it can be anywhere in the world and I'll be in our office within I say our in the office of Vogue you know almost overnight even when I was there and so when you're exposed to that level of talent and you learn from that it's an enormous enormous privilege but it is grueling it involves a lot of sacrifice there are no hours and particularly the part I was in which was editorial and you know but I was just so happy to be there I mean it was like every day was like breathing more air and it was something that enabled me to move on with the rest of my life so those years were grueling I can't say they weren't long days long nights everything but totally worth it to me anyway absolutely so we're following up from that you mentioned the importance of working for someone you respect it but also devil's we're product so I'm intrigued to know what was your relationship with your first boss fashion it wasn't Anna Wintour my first boss because we were content we are contemporaries I worked for a woman well first of all the woman that hired me Frances Stein but then I also work for the editor-in-chief grace Marbella as long as I was one of her three assistants and then I worked for Pauline Mountain the legendary Polly Mellon and Pauline Mellon used to inspire fear and loathing from everyone in the entire floor at Vogue I mean she come in off the elevator you could everybody start to just tremble like this and you could feel Polly approaching and she starts screaming beer like that you know I just started to shake but she really she really taught me everything about organization about logic about being overly prepared you were never prepared enough for shoes and her passion Polly would be at the French collections and be the only one to stand up and start clapping screaming Bravo John you know for John Galliano or whoever she was a passionate passionate woman and she imbued me and many four other assistants with that same passion education but she was tough very very tough in fact in one of the Bogue movies I think it's the editors eye they asked me what polly was like and I said brutal I said something like maybe a or brutal or something like I don't remember I said something very inappropriate but it was the truth because that was the only way that she thought she could train me that was it was like tough love and in a way I still thank her for that because I could never probably have gone on with the same work ethic without experiencing her training so absolutely so after 70 17 years at those yeah 17 what made you decide to go to Ralph Lauren and what was your I don't want to be a designer after all that I still thought I can do this I go to all the shows in Milan in Paris I'd shoot all the clothes for years and years and I just something in me just still wanted to do that and I was lucky enough actually I was supposed to go to work for Jeffrey being another man that I idolized and right before I was supposed to start with him I got a job offer from Ralph Lauren and that was interesting because the interview was really fascinating I'd only worked at Vogue all those years I didn't know anything else and I met with them and he the first thing asked me was what do you hate about my clothes which was you know really intimidating and I said something that went like this do you want me to be honest with you what I really think or do you want me to say something that you want to hear and he said I want you to tell me what you really think about my clothes I won't say that here in the room but he hired me right then and there and he said come back your heart and it was an incredible experience just like Vogue I've only really worked for two two jobs before my own company one was Vogue and one was Ralph Lauren and when you worked for Ralph you learn about someone who is so consistent in his point of view and so confident about who he is and now I that somebody will understand branding I don't think he would even call it Brandi I don't think he's even aware of that I think what it is is his vision of who he is and his integrity and I think that's something that you don't often see in fashion companies because fashion bites that very definition implies change constant change constant reinvention nothing's ever good because you've seen it for 10 seconds and Ralph was never subject to that he always felt that you know he had such a strong vision and his vision was not only a fashion but of America and he brought that to to fashion he brought American fashion and American style to the world of fashion and so I felt very lucky again to have gone to the Ralph Lauren school of fashion after the Vogue school of fashion but in both cases they were extraordinary experiences and I to this day will never forget it I mean I feel so lucky and I really owe both companies if I'm sitting here I owe them both my entire career absolutely so it was actually your own wedding that inspire you to launch your pride away yes could you talk a little bit about the design for your own wedding dress and what well I got engaged very late and for years my mother's friends would say why isn't she married what's wrong with her and my mother would say I've given up and she's never getting married and that's it and so when I started to look for a wedding dress when I got engaged I was working at Ralph Lauren and I was a design director there and Ralph and I sort of agreed that it would be bad if he did the dress because if I didn't like it I'd lose my job and if I you know didn't I wanted him to make changes he might get angry at me so we decided early on that maybe I should just work on my dress on my own and I realized when I was shopping for a wedding gown that there was nothing very modern wedding dresses at that point it's sort of become this commodity and this is an era when you know cher warhead pieces and things were hanging down off her face and you know most of the dresses were four inch cap sleeves with a big dupioni skirt and sort of sequin lace and I've been at Vogue and seeing everything in fashion in the entire world for almost two decades and then I'd worked for Ralph Lauren so there was nothing that I really found that appealed to me and it was my father who identified this business opportunity and he said there have to be other women like you out there who don't just want to formulaic dress and they really want something that's more special or you know more inventive or maybe realize that the different types of women the diversity of women I mean a woman can be very modern or very traditional or very sexy in the sense of you know more show-off ish I mean there's so many different kinds of women and bridal fashion never reflected that it reflected the image of a bride but not of women and so coming from the fashion background I did I'm not really a bridal designer person I'm really a fashion designer who happens to also do Bridal and that's a very very important really really important detail because I don't see I never seen bridal gowns as purely formulaic I've always seen them as fashion and that has led me to try a lot of different things and sort of shock people but I think it was important I think like everything else Bridal had to be viewed in a different light and so when I got engaged that's what really set it all off and also I didn't see anything for someone who was 40 40 was like 90 so you know I was looking around and all the other Brides were like 22 and Here I am looking at these wedding gowns and I really couldn't relate to any of them and then I said well maybe I'll go to Paris and go to Chanel and get something there but that was hard to do working for Ralph says the design director so I never made that trip to Paris but I have to say I've never considered Bridal as something that's purely you know either pomp and circumstance or a beach dress I think all of it is possible today and it depends on the bride and I think she should feel free and be given permission to express herself the way she wants to be and that's what I try to bring to every collection that I do absolutely so let's talk about personality now so in an industry that is quote often marked for its population of self-serious introverts and quote many describe you as having the opposite personality someone very spontaneous eccentric and charming what role do you think is back good word well we'll do you have personality has to play in fashion um I think it's probably become more important than it once was I think a lot of designers we used to joke work in the ivory tower and a very famous designer named Giorgio Armani once said that it that design is a temple it's the template designed to come in to a design meeting with Armani is coming almost almost having a religious experience and that's really the way I believe he still views design and I know that today that's harder we are in a different era now and you need to have so much exposure and the pressures of all the design lines I sort of referred to that upstairs before it's very difficult counted it out that it's basically 12 weeks from collection to collection and that isn't including men's because we don't do full menswear so it could be even six weeks and all you're given is this piece of fabric and what do you do with this roll of fabric how do you take it to a place as cohesive that's organized that's created that's inventive that's producible I mean all of these things are part of the design process and I think very few people realize that and it's not the speed so in a world where there's it's so fast I think personalities become more important because they help a brand and they help the product to stand out as well as ambassadors for brands I mean that's always been there but not to the extent that it is now what do you think is your mission as an artist for me it's always to push myself to explore further more techniques more ideas to really every collection I do I really give everything I have it's a time succeeding there was a time when I knew what I was gonna do for collection and I would do research we accept I'm do you research by books I was thinking of an artist I would study that artists like Vermeer the girl with the Pearl Earring I want to CFDA you know a woman's we're designer of the year for that collection but that time no longer exists we have to move much faster now and that's troubling to me that's one of the things that I think Tom Ford's have the same thing that there's no more time but I know that for me with everything I do I really tried to do a thorough examination what I'm trying to achieve within a collection and to make it as cohesive and you don't a lot of time either so you have to be able to express that whether it's in a video of 30 seconds or show seven minutes that's all the time you have to express your vision and that's a lot of pressure on all of us not just me but I think I speak for you know my fellow designers as well absolutely so you mentioned creativity and innovation yes he thinks what what do you think is the key to your success and your brand's success god I never feel successful ever I don't ever feel I feel accomplished I feel educated I feel experienced successful probably not that much because there are many ways to measure success in fashion is it financial are you the biggest player in the world in fashion or are you the most respected or are you the most creative and free or are you the most consistent I mean these are all things that play through every designers brain all this noise is in your head every time you design a skirt and I think that any designer that is a serious designer would say the same thing and so success success I would say probably it's my passion in my dedication and my love of fashion and also my experience my experience my education I am a student I like to study and I respect my fellow designers and many of them I stand in awe of them and that's a wonderful way to feel even after all these years it'll be 50 years for me next year that I've been in fashion and it'll be 30 years next year that I've had my own company and I still feel the same way about other designers about their talent their creativity and a work ethic and it's a very very hard business and you have to love it you shouldn't be in it if you don't like you mean any business if you don't love it by the same token the better you get at it the more you begin to love it and that could be whether your banker or your lawyer or you know you're in Silicon Valley I mean I think as you grow as you become more assured as you learn more you begin to really love anything you do more as well so it works both ways but for me success I wouldn't know how to really define it I mean a lot of people define success by Fame and I seen Fame be so fleeting that I can't really say that that defines success for me on a personal level I think a work ethic integrity humility and it's constant the constant search to do it better to not feel satisfied and you realize that you can always come up with something newer or something that's more evolved and that's I've lived my whole career in fashion it's it's been the love of my life it's also been excruciating like many love affairs but it's something it's an industry I'm very proud to be a part of I have to say that's something I do feel I feel proud to be a member of the fashion industry as a follow-up question who do you look up to in the fashion industry oh god there's so many I mean there are people who the size of the sheer size and magnitude of their business and their power in the marketplace is a kind of success even though many of the designers do not own the brand's they're hired to work for I think creativity with a kind of freedom that's without limits is another kind of respect I have I mean I could cite Gucci's present success right now for the enormity of it and I could cite ray ku a copy for coming the gown soul as somebody who's been fearless her whole life and a genius I mean she's somebody who never stops being inspired and at particulate this stage of her life she has nothing to prove to anyone and yet I believe she is a lot to prove to herself constantly so there's so many that I really really admire my Ralph Lauren because he brought America the the style of Americans I mean Europe you look to for grandeur and history and provenance but Americans you look to for ease and lifestyle and both Ralph and Calvin Klein each in their own ways brought that to fashion and so there's so many I mean I couldn't even begin to say how many you know I love Rick Cohen he's a dear friend I'm wearing his t-shirt he's really he's really somebody that has explored the most dark side of fashion I think with incredible courage and conviction and you and he's technically so able and so they're many john galliano I mean all those freedom John's a free spirit and technically an incredible designer technically so it's hard for me to just say who I admire the most Mucha Prada and Jil Sander there been so many but I think what I admire too is their their humility and their work ethic and their passion for what they do and that's something you have to respect absolutely so the list of public figures have warned Vera Wang range from you know Chelsea Clinton to Ariana Grande what role do you think yes the celebrity it's all right I true what celebrity celebrity has defined my business in particular because from the very first for some reason I don't really understand my very first bride when I open my store Madison Avenue New York was a Kennedy so and that is our American royalty so I have to say it sort of found me in an odd way in that era celeb redressing did not exist so if you either had a socialite that warrior clothes a little bit like phantom thread the film and that was that was the celebrity of that era and there were the ones the so-called socialites that could afford the clothing celebrity culture was not what it is today nothing to do with it and the education these women had that went to Paris and went to all these houses and like worth and all these things forever I mean all these incredible fashion houses Madame GREs all of these before even eat Celeron Dior himself balance yoga every one of these houses existed for women that were extremely wealthy it was not a democratic business and I think with celebrity fashion today and their influence it has helped to democratize fashion a great deal and our company in particular as an American house was very lucky from the very beginning we always seem to attract celebrities what advice would you give to those in the audience that want to go into the fashion industry and more specifically young women who want to become fashion designers young women in particular not young men oh as well okay young women okay it's a touchy subject right now for us so I have to say that I did say that once again I'll reiterate that worked for someone I see so many people that you know their parents help them and they think they can start a fashion company and you know and in the end they don't make it because fashion is big business today and you need incredible financing you need incredible infrastructure and these are things you just don't get just by starting off so when you work for someone that you respect or a house whose vision you love you learn about all that you see all these things going on and that's an education you cannot duplicate and very few people start on their own and succeed there very very few it's even more impossible today than when I started and I think I'm gonna say it one more time work for somebody you really respect and if you can't get that particular job you know try for another but to be paid to learn is the biggest privilege because you're learning and you're getting paid and that's the best way to understand any industry and to really know if you really want to be a part of it or not mm-hmm absolutely could you talk us through a little bit and through the creative process of how you get an idea and then put them into pen and paper yeah and if you do anything in particular to spark your creativity I sit my beddit and and cry no I mean literally I say oh my god oh my god the shows in like seven weeks I haven't got one idea I mean when I started I used to have time to research I'd say oh you know I'm gonna do Flemish painters or oh I'm gonna do Deadwood this Western TV show on TV and I mean that was crazy and you know now they're times I'm just making clothes I'd say where are we going with this because it hasn't I wasn't able to come up with it and so during that period where we're trying to create a collection of six weeks max I have to find some way to bring all the components together and that's not an ideal way to work it's it's nerve-wracking it's frightening it's excruciating and sometimes you don't the right fabric and it's too late to get it from Italy and you know it's it's a real process I have to say particular the collection level it's not about items it's about a vision and you know sometimes I think I must be a serious masochist to put myself through this for 30 years but it is it has let's say it has given me confidence where I'm really feeling frightened or scared or frustrated or empty creatively I say to myself you've been here before you have done this before you can do this you will get through this and I sort of just keep telling myself that although there are a lot of really close calls I mean sometimes it's like two days before Shawn I'm switching gears you know Marc Jacobs once said that to me he said I liked it on Tuesday but I didn't like it on Thursday and by Friday I thought I was on the wrong path I said God me too you know and the two is just sort of saying commiserating together but it is true that you know everything you look at every day before collection some days you like it and sometimes you say to yourself what was I thinking I mean it's it's that precarious and I think most designers would if they were really being honest would agree absolutely so my final question before we open up to questions from the audience um how do you keep Vera Wang season after season at the forefront of the fashion industry um I think I can't say that were the forefront of the fashion industry I think that I tried very hard to take chances I believe that you're gonna work at the collection level you're there to take chances you're there to try things to experiment I think that's what you do when you're working at the highest price point and so for me that involves trying to make things bonding fabrics lately I've been bonding and I needed a bonding machine and you know you just try to you know put fabrics together to invent new textures in a new way they will react to the shoulder the back or the I mean it's it's getting more and more technological fashion and people have asked you what is the future of fashion and I always say there'll be new materials though there will be materials that a sewing machine cannot sell and you're going to have to heat set it or bond it and that's what's going to change fashion and it already is the traditional ways is simply sewing by hand or with the machine cannot always solve the problems that you face when you're trying to work with fabrics they're not you cannot penetrate them with a needle you have to find another way of dealing with it and like techno fabrics I call them and so it's it's challenging that will be the few that is the present and it will only get more and more technical as time goes on thank you so now we'll take a few questions from the audience so if you have a question please raise your hand wait for the microphone to reach you and please stand up and stick to one question per person for the first question we'll go to the lady in the second row the black shirt thank you thank you Vera so my name is Chen Chauhan also last name one so I'm currently Oxford and be a student in after graduation I would like to start my entrepreneurship in arts and culture which is also related to you fashion app your MBA yes which is coming soon and the server thank you so my question is actually broad but also per fund it's a question about of fashion for me fashion is more like a ghost everybody know exists but Nova really sees clearly what this girl's looks like so fundamentally how would you like to define fashion what distinguish a great fashion designer to ordinary one thank you easy question yikes I would say the great designers have a vision they have a vision of a woman and or men and that vision is something that is unique it's not what everybody else wears that's too easy that's a being a shopper not a designer a designer has to be someone who sees things in other proportions of their contexts in a whole different way with a different attitude and then if they're if they're really influential it it comes down the fashion shoot it goes to the next level then the next level then the next level I think because of how big fascists become as an industry that sometimes a lot of that is lost now but the experimentation and the things that really define a great designer and that kind of intellectual exercise is something that is probably not that rare but not that encouraged anymore in our industry because people are looking for fast fashion they want things that are trend so that everybody looks the same or versions of the same if it's a wide leg pant which I'm wearing today right now or whatever but the lingerie inspired top these are just trends these are not the vision of a visionary designer I'm sorry to say it's a big difference and I think there are still designers today that are determined to have a vision and to create that way but because of the nature of the business it's based on how much you can sell so if it's a wide pant then they're gonna be 80 million versions of that all over the world from Moscow Fashion Week to Hongkong Fashion Week's and York Fashion Week to Milan or Paris it's a really really innovative designer is somebody that really sees clothing and proportion and fabric in a whole new way and that takes study thank you so next question will go to that to my rights thank you so much should be I apologize about my voice uh-huh so I recently graduated from Sarah Lawrence College I'm sorry to say I missed your keynote speak a few years back but um I wanted to ask for any other Sarah Lawrence people that are in the room because some of us are here do you think there's any aspect of York's experience there on your Europe Sarah Lawrence yeah that that influenced yeah career I'm kind of like a maverick so Sarah Lawrence was the only college I think I could graduate from I mean you know sorry to say in these hallowed halls but my father's dream was that I'd go to Harvard and I didn't even apply because I didn't think I could get in but Sarah Lawrence was really in hindsight the right school for me because it encouraged individuality in a way that was quite a vanguard era I mean just the course load and the choice of you know what you're studying was unheard of there was a thing called that well SIL is the dawn method in which you're assigned dawn who is almost like your psychiatrist or your own parent and not just your teacher and there's something special about that because that person encourages you to discover yourself to be individual and not to blend in with a class in a certain way and that was probably the only college I could have ever made it through because I didn't conform terribly well ever and I think that that's why that school was really the right school for me thank you thank you so next question we will go to the hand all the way in the back hi I've recently just finished my final major project on filibus women and I was wondering that when you design your clothing so what did you just about right well I just finished my final major project on on filibus women and how the fashion industry doesn't always include them and I just wondering when you design your clothing do you ever think about women with a fella basketball or is there just not the like market for it that's a really fair question actually because we have dealt with that in the industry for a very long time I'm a board member at the Council of Fashion Designers of America I'm also an officer and it's not even about necessarily the body shape or the weight or that kind of whatever you were cannot not rules but ideas about how fashion should look what what it really has happened to us is that fashion in many ways has become democratized but at the same time it's become very trendy so that when you see a period of fashion say in the 70s when I started in fashion it was a very very different kind of body type the models that taught at that time we're very different they weren't particularly fish they weren't particularly athletic it was just a very very different like anything else in fashion it changed and the very fact today that we are able to embody all different kinds of women is part of that democratization not only in terms of price and availability of clothing but also embracing all kinds of women that can then enjoy and create their own identity with their fashion choices and so that's something that we do discuss all the time in our industry and it's been you know like anything else in evolution and we're all working towards seeing things through so many different eyes and so many different ways and trying to explore that each I think each and every one of us in fashion I hope that answered a little bit what I was what you were asking thank you so now next questions we'll go to the second row hello my name is Alexandra I'm graduating from MSC social sense of the internet the summer thank you for an amazingly interesting talk and it was especially interesting to hear how you were noticed and how you get your first job at Vogue and how you were speaking about learning from the best so my question is related and a bit bold how do I get hired by you ah it's so flattering it's highly pas it's totally possible I mean I know I say that honesty because we've always loved really loved having interns come and work for us and I've had some also bad experiences for the interns not for us but you know one of my parents very very good friends their daughter wanted to be in fashion and if she came to intern for me for a summer and by the end of the summer I said how'd your injections I hated it and I don't want to be in fashion anymore I'm going to medical school so I said was it us or was it you you know that kind of thing and I it's a true story by the way she couldn't stand fashion after working for me not even with me I I didn't you know I mean working in a company and working in the industry so no I mean I think we're always looking for people that really are passionate that have ideas that see fashion in a new way not ways we've seen and you know we're always on the lookout to hire you know interns for starters and then eventually graduating to jobs thank you next question we will go to the hand in the second row the one closest to me yep hi um so I'm currently studying law but prior to that I went to study fashion but one of the things that innocence put me off and I think you sort of touched on that is the relative uncertainty and how people could go to the best fashion school sensei Martin Parsons still find it hard to move from fashion school to a job and you talked about being paid to learn but one thing that I think happens a lot in fashion industry's on paid internships so I guess my question is how what's your advice to someone who is leaving fashion school and is trying to get a job but not sort of enter the circle unpaid internships and actually have some certainty on their career track give me certainty in the fashion industry or do you mean certainty in your job no I mean those are not necessarily the same thing yes no I mean more of people that are trying to get a job but not to have to go through several unpaid internships and not go through internships what go through internships but I mean basically the idea that people don't really get hired sometimes where they end up in a cycle of internships and it's hard for them to oh I think I and realize that because obviously not every intern gets hired by the place an intern with or the company they intern with they may intern with you can intern with Ralph Lauren and end up at balanced yoga you know in Paris so I think it's I mean I think the uncertainty of fashion is no different than the uncertainty of any other industry I think where it is a bit tougher is that it's your measured in ways that are not finite so you know if you're and you do analyses for bank and you're analyzing companies for a hedge fund or anything you'll be judged on whether they're profitable or not if they don't make money within 3 years and get divested that company then they failed fashion is not that fashion is much more ethereal it's much more complex it's nuanced it's hard to measure success in fashion as I said before there's so many kinds of success you can be a retailer and be very successful so I think if you are feeling that you want to enter the fashion world but you're already a bit discouraged because you've had many internships and you haven't found maybe a future job for yourself I would say definitely not to give up it's like being actor in England or Hollywood or wherever I mean many people wait on tables forever just to wait for their break I don't say that to be pejorative I say that because it's the truth and I think if you really love fashion and feel that strongly about it you will find a way to be in fashion and that I'm sure of thank you next question we will go to the person just next to thank you so first of all I thank you so much for giving that talk tonight my name is Fujio and I'm studying chemistry here um I think I'm from the like same hometown as you in China same I think province jang-soo I think I have two parents that I had had two parents and they were from different prompt my father's home Shanghai and my mother was from Jiang Shi province shun Kazami yells to my home on the Yangtze River so yes so my question is like what's the biggest difference you find from like between working for a company yes and wronging your own brand or like what's the most difficult thing you first find like between transferring between these two position right because I've done both I would say that if you need a paycheck it's kind of nice to work for someone else because you know that paycheck is coming hopefully and that that part of your life is taken care of whereas being entrepreneur you never know what's going to happen you have absolutely no concept about things you can't even control or even dream of that can happen to you so it's a very different kind of headset and a very different kind of personality not everyone can deal with being a true entrepreneur I'm not saying it's better it's just different and you have to be aware that it's constant worry it's constantly trying to figure out how to stay alive and how to keep the company going and how to keep your employees going how to keep them motivated how to offer them some sort of future and when you work for someone else that is taken care of for you they worry about that you worry about what you're doing there and that you're doing the best you can possibly do because if you don't want that job there are millions of other people that do and you have to remember that kaan seen your head that if you have a job and you're learning and you're thriving then that is an extraordinary experience and you will never forget it and you will take it with you the rest of your life wherever you go and whatever you do thank you so much thank you next question we will go to the second row to the left yeah so you mentioned that you've been to both Milan and Paris so I was wondering if you could tell me what the difference is between them in the fashion sense but also which one you prefer bearing in mind that I'm from Milan okay so um I think Milan has always been known for leather goods and I don't I mean that in a very serious sense nobody works with leather better than the Italians there's absolutely no one on earth I think it started with the Romans sandals before Julius Caesar I'm not sure maybe you guys can weigh in on this because you're more educated than I am but I have to say that no one works in leather better than intense it is there it is your excuse me it is your heritage it really is and so made the great fashion houses outs out of Milan have started because of leather goods I'll say Gucci for one just to begin with Prada is another they're all not do not ran them as accessory businesses that would not be fair they really understand the craft of leather and things are more related to sportswear and maybe an easier kind of look Paris it's full head started fully couture from louis xiv i've been reading about him a lot recently and Paris is about construction of dresses it's about the kind of clothing the almost how I say it's it's fast becoming well let's just say you can't find that kind of craftsmanship very much anymore in clothing and that's a pity because it's a dying art form because young people today don't want to learn how to sew like that they used to go like their grandmother and great-grandmother and they go to an atelier like your so they'd work for generations at Dior but they no longer want to do it this way I don't want to do that you know I want to be either a star design or something that they're losing interest in the craftsmanship of what is known as French fashion and so both are valid in different ways but I think Milan has always been known for that kind of lifestyle brand and the way people dress have always dressed Sarah and Paris parents is that you quite formal for so many decades even in my lifetime I remember that when the first designer is to maybe bring sportswear to the French was each salawah he dressed women in men's clothes in pants and blazers and things that women never wore before and so they're very very their history is very very different Paris used to be a dress making town it was about dresses and for men certainly about tailoring and Milan of course is tailoring to men as well but very much the craftsmanship of leather goods and leather clothing and that's something that Milan has always been known for and will always be known for both are equally competitive they always have been and London now as well and I think that with the international world we live in in fashion now it's much more fluid I mean I think American designers have worked out of Paris Achon designers have worked out of New York British designers have worked in Paris so I think it's a very different time than fashion but those two things do hold true I mean each country had its own history of what they were good at and they take that history follows with every generation thank you so now to the next question we will go to the hand all the way to the right hi I was just really interested because you were talking about the ways in which your clothes and fashion more generally can be used by people to create an identity for themselves and express themselves in certain ways well my friend and I are drag performers as you might see and one thing that we're quite interested in and gets talked about in drag circles a lot is creating fantasy and feeling fantasy living it and I was just wondering the extent to which you see your work and the work of fashion as big creating fantasy or creating the tools for people to create their own fantasies or is it different things at different times I think in one part of my business which is Bridal people tend to think of Bridal as fantasy and for me it isn't really that I know that's odd coming from me but I think of Bridals every bit about fashion as ready-to-wear to me it's just a different format a different proportion different fabrics and definitely the usage is different um use your bridal gown it's worn only once they're no longer passed down I don't think that often anymore and it's once again about the woman it's very much about the bride for me when I think of a bridal collection I'm thinking of how she will look on her wedding day when I think of ready-to-wear I'm thinking myself as the creator I'm thinking what would I want to wear how would I wear it I know people use a seed you wear your own clothes all the time I said when I first started with bright eyes so I don't run around a wedding dress every day so obviously you know I don't wear my own clothes I've only doing Bridal but since I've been doing ready-to-wear certainly what I feel and what I want to wear is what I try to create with every collection so they're very very bifurcated one is in that direction the others in that direction but yet the one thing that is true is that whatever I do I try to keep the consistency of my study my vision and how I really or what I believe women deserve the quality that women deserve that clothing is expensive all clothing is expensive whatever price point you're you're spending and I think people women deserve the best of me and I try to give the best whether I'm doing a $19 t-shirt or I'm doing $20,000 dress for me the process is still the same I try to do the best I possibly can I hope that answers your question thank you unfortunately that's all we have time for but please join me in thanking Vera Wang for joining us today you

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Length: 56min 30sec (3390 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018