Will Vera Wang Wear Black for Her Divorce?

Wang and Becker, 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

Here's is a high profile divorce of an Asian woman and a white man. My intuition has been that Asian women/white men marriages are more fragile than they seem. Since this type of union is relatively new (as far as the human species is concerned), I think we're beginning to see the beginnings of the fall outs.

I was never impressed with the Wang/Becker marriage. I wrote about the fashion designer and her husband last January intuiting some kind of marital discord:

[Wang] doesn't talk about her husband in the article [January 10, 2012 Harper's Bazaar]. Does he travel from one side of the country to the other on Wang's schedule?

Wang had recently bought a home in California, and relocated her business from New York, where her husband still lived at the time, to Los Angeles.

And about Becker, I wrote:

He looks like another one of those insipid, disconcerted spouses.

Later on, I found that he actually quit his job in 2010 to work with Wang's fashion conglomerate. I wrote:

A 2010 headline at the NaviSite website informs us that "Arthur P. Becker Steps Down [as CEO] and is Succeeded by R. Brooks Borcherding," which implies that Becker has retired. This leaves him ample time to follow his wife around to satisfy her yins and yangs.

People Magazine confirms Becker's beck and call to his wife with:

Though Becker reportedly had his own business ventures, he was also involved in Wang’s company, which has expanded into makeup, fragrances, mass market, juniors, home goods and a lower-cost bridal line in recent years. However, a friend of the designer tells WWD that the couple “will not let this impact the running of the company. They have worked too hard to build it up.”

A cheeky blogger writes:

Some suggest the divorce from Arthur Becker had some clues in her Fall 2012 Bridal Collection (view gowns 7-13 here), known for Wang's penchant for all things dark.

This may be a joke, but I have written about Wang's funereal wedding gowns, where I comment:

Wang's flashing bride in black is a negative statement on weddings, and life, in general. In our culture, white is for purity, whereas black is often for death, the mysterious (and evil?) underworld, darkness and obfuscation. And if the bride wears black, it is as though the she went to her own funeral. Or is a widow executing a vengeful act...And what real-life bride wants to be dressed in black, even with the modern woman's dearth of cultural knowledge and sensitivity?

And the bride wore black:
Wang's Wang's black wedding dress
from her Fall 2010 collection

Appearances matter. A black wedding dress, however much a fashion statement, is a black wedding dress. Of course, besides the macabre color Wang chose for the most important day in the union of a man and a woman, she also produced mediocre gowns which I call mounds of chiffon, which were exaggerated piles of gauze to detract from the mediocrity of her designs.

Becker plans to continue working with the Wang enterprise (at the other end of the country from Wang's California base). There is no doubt that Wang is a savvy and aggressive entrepreneur. But eventually, young women will catch on, and demand more from the dress they will wear at an important milestone in their life. What will Wang concoct next? And what will Becker do?


Above is a 1995 photograph of Wang and Becker. I describe the photo thus:

Fashion designer Vera Wang coiled, Eve-like, around her husband.

Even insipid white men eventually untangle themselves from life-threatening situation.