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Beverly Hills house" in nothing but a swim suit
I've critiqued Vera Wang's dresses and wedding gowns in several blog posts where I've tried to show that she essentially copies (in an uninteresting way) other designers. I think she has become the designer du jour by savvy marketing and promotion. Other designers like the wedding dress designer Amsale Aberra and Carolina Herrera keep a low profile, but are, in my opinion, better designers. Here's a post where I compare Wang's wedding dresses with Amsale's. Designers like Jean Paul Gaultier come up with pretty crazy ideas, but they are at least working toward some originality, and stretching fashion and textile design as far as it will take them. Wang just stays safe.
I wrote that her design of Sandra Bullock's 2011 Oscar dress was structurally flawed. I wrote:
[I]t is strange that Wang would make a dress so similar to [Carolina Herrera's dress]. The odd protrusions at the breasts, especially pronounced in Wang's version, and the sculptured bodice detract from the flow of the dresses.Here is more at a post I titled: (Serious) Design Flaws of a Vera Wang Gown:Or, How Vera Wang is a Mediocre Designer.
Her Golden Globe dress for Sofia Vergara (see image below) attracted a lot of attention. But again, like much of what Wang does, I found it structurally flowed. The wide profusion of feathers at the base of dress makes it difficult to walk and to sit. Also, the narrowing of the dress below the knees, which is called a mermaid cut, would make the wearer walk like, well, a mermaid in uncomfortably short steps restricted by the dress. Other designers have used this mermaid cut but provide ample room for walking, and work with material that is more comfortable for the person wearing the dress.
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gown at the 2012 Golden Globes
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L-R:Monique Lhuillier, Zac Posen, Oscar de la Renta and Posen again
But this is Wang's style, to make some kind of ostentatious statement to cover up for the flaws in her design.
Wang is in the latest Bazaar magazine, not to showcase her clothes but to show herself. She is standing in various poses in front of her Los Angeles home. Above is one with her in a swim suit and heels. She says with false modesty that she's not "the type of woman who would wear high heels with a bathing suit" yet there she is in full view of a multitude of magazine readers. Of course she wants to be seen in a bathing suit and heels. One of the other dresses gives her a strange little girl/S&M appearance, replete with leather bodices and seven inch heels. In another, she looks like some sloppy bohemian. So much for a fashion designer.
She talks of her two homes, on either side of the continent. More from the Bazaar article:
'New York for me is about work. If LA were to become a West Coast version of that, I'd shoot myself,' she said. 'The climate, the lifestyle — it really fits as the yin to my New York yang.'She doesn't talk about her husband in the article. Does he travel from one side of the country to the other on Wang's schedule? He looks like another one of those insipid, disconcerted spouses, although he looked a little more sure of himself at their wedding.
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R: On May 15 2011 at the Museum of Modern Art's 39th Annual Party
with Wang in her hippy costume while her husband is in full black tie attire
I wonder if Wang's Hollywood glamor shot is a reaction to this absent husband? And what designer of real caliber would opt for the cold, bare minimalist structure that she proudly shows off as "one of her homes" to a fashion magazine?
For some reason, the design world has bestowed on Wang all this undue respect.
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next to one of her wedding gowns
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