For a guy who's just 30,Jason Wu
(who looks even younger in person) has figured out an impressive number of things already. Aside from being able to eyeball any item of clothing and deconstruct how it was made, he knows who he is—"I'm a fashion nerd," he admits happily over drinks at the Lambs Club in New York City's midtown one evening in early April—and who he is not: "I'm not trendy. I don't have a grunge bone in me." The Taiwan native (he was raised in Vancouver) goes on to clarify: "You won't see me in a dive bar. It's not me. I went through my crazy-hair phase and my I'm-not-Asian phase. I had blue eyes and blond hair for a while." Wu, who, by his own admission, always made his bed at boarding school (one in Massachusetts; one in Connecticut) and got his designing chops as a boy by creating clothes for dolls, has grown into an unnervingly farsighted young man for whom a sense of control is crucial. "Chaos is not for me," he observes. "If my desk is cluttered, I can't work."
If fashion designers, like politicians, can be divided into liberals and conservatives, Wu would definitely put himself on the right end of the spectrum. He makes no apologies for not being a radical—"In my shows, there's always been a uniformity and neatness"—and disapproves of the instant access that the Internet has brought, enabling people to think they know more about fashion than they really do. " 'Two-seasons-ago Prada' is not a reference," he states emphatically. "If you can google it, I don't want it." Though Wu knows it isn't "cool" these days, his own approach to design is steeped in references to an earlier period. He invokes Madame Grès, for instance, when explaining how he drapes the pleats on his dresses freehand.
This ultrafocused and unapologetically upmarket sensibility—"If you're looking for a great white T-shirt, don't come to me"—has informed Wu's aesthetic since, fresh out of the Parsons school of design, he showed his first collection of supremely feminine and meticulously crafted clothes in 2006. The company was and is financed with money from Wu's ongoing position as creative director of Integrity Toys, which makes dolls. His parents, who run a company that produces and exports food products and industrial animal feed, have also provided financial assistance as well as business advice. (His mother, he points out, has never missed a show.)
What was different about Wu right from the start is that he didn't seem to be experimenting off the consumer's back; instead, he arrived with a fully formed conception of who wanted his designs—"a certain kind of power woman," as he describes it, "a strong, confident woman with a certain 'strictness.' " Unlike other young designers, he kept his process—and his influences: Norman Norell, Charles James, Yves Saint Laurent—to himself, sending clothes down the runway that expressed an antiminimalist vision ("I always have a feather or beading or polka dot of some sort") marked by an almost eerily precocious brio and polish. Aside from his core clientele of affluent and stylish women, there is a neon-lit group he calls "the Wu girls," including Rachel Weisz, Jaime King, Michelle Williams, Emma Stone, and Julianne Moore—and his partner in this portrait, the ravishing Diane Kruger.
Still, only a few years ago Wu was a name known mostly to industry insiders and the high-end retailers who carried him at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks, Browns in London. All that changed, of course, when Michelle Obama stepped in front of the cameras at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball in 2009 wearing a crystal-studded fairy tale of a gown he created. The impact on his visibility was enormous; the story of his sitting in front of his TV with a few close friends in his midtown apartment on inauguration night, unaware that his was the dress that had been chosen, added to the built-in drama of a young immigrant whose aspirations and hard work led to undreamed-of success.
Within literally a matter of minutes, the offers—for everything from product endorsements to reality shows—came pouring in. It might have turned someone else's head, but what's remarkable about Wu, I discover the more I spend time with him, is how he lacks the egotism one associates with driven, creative types. "People who don't know me think my career is made of one dress. It didn't change my work ethic or my aesthetic, but it changed how other people perceived me. I never capitalized on it," he says, sounding not the least bit defensive. "I want to be known for my work. I don't want to be known for me; I don't think I am that interesting. I was offered a book deal right away." He pauses and looks at me incredulously, to see if I've registered the folly of that. "I'm not a writer—I'm still on my first chapter. I'm an article right now; I'm an essay at best. I don't know how my story ends." And then, to make clear that he's not a purist sitting on high, he adds, "Now, if someone had offered me a fragrance deal…."
These days, with a second custom inaugural dress for Michelle Obama, circa 2013, under his belt as well as a slew of new partnerships and licensing arrangements (a collaboration on a makeup collection with Lancôme is due in September), Wu still keeps his eye firmly on the road ahead. One afternoon in March, I meet him at his large (10,000 square feet) showroom, wholly unfrantic despite a staff of 30, which houses his latest season of clothes as well as his mouthwatering collection of shoes and bags. As Wu sifts through a rack of his fall designs, I'm struck by the exacting workmanship that goes into everything he creates, whether a red-and-black chiffon pleated dress with beaded trim, an ostrich feather belt, a black satin funnel-neck trench coat with fox pockets, or a pair of perfectly cut bone-white wool stovepipe pants. Many of the halter and flounce dresses are lined with corsetry, in the way of bygone haute couture, and there is a general sense of inside-out luxury. His refined, just this side of prissy approach has loosened up in recent years, and even he admits to "a certain flamboyance—not Liberace, but sexy" in his fall collection. He says he dreams of working in a pastry shop and admits to sometimes faltering under the pressure and expectation. "So many times," he says, "I've felt 'I can't do this.' "
Perhaps, but I have every confidence that Wu will continue, in his reserved and exquisitely attuned way, to make clothes for a particular kind of connoisseur of fashion. "The women who buy my clothes have discerning taste," he says, with quiet pride. "My customer isn't buying my clothes because famous people wear them."
On Kruger: Silk georgette belted peplum top, price on request, wool tuxedo pants, $795, satin sandals, $975, all, Jason Wu, collection at select Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus stores nationwide.
Liked this article? Get it first when you subscribe to ELLE magazine.
