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You can expect to hear two things at almost any wedding in 2002: Richard Wagner's classic wedding march ("Here comes the bride ... ") and someone asking, "Is that a Vera Wang?"
In just 12 years, the ever youthful designer has just about reached the same classic status as the 150-year-old processional. Today, the intense daughter of Chinese immigrants sits atop the American fashion scene with her spectacular Vera Wang Bridal House on Madison Avenue and a multimillion-dollar empire of fashions, fragrances, accessories and a new collection for the home.
There are Vera Wang salons throughout the country plus Toronto, London and Singapore. And she has designed evening wear for Hollywood leading ladies including Holly Hunter and Rene Russo.
It all starts in her multilevel, ultramodern West 39th Street showroom, which holds racks of innovative bridal samples (the latest collection tagged for retail from $2,500 to $12,000) designed with a sophistication and flair that attracts celebrities from Mariah Carey to Sharon Stone.
"As a fashion professional - and a former bride - I am now able to translate all of my knowledge, experience and love of style to the visual and emotional vocabulary of weddings," Wang says. And she has quite a background to draw on. Educated at Sarah Lawrence College and at the Sorbonne in Paris, she was a competitive ice skater, and, some would say, an equally competitive fashion editor in the 16 formative years she spent at Vogue.
That attribute, plus talent, took her to Ralph Lauren as a hands- on design director for the man who was remaking mass fashion. Two years later, she was ready to set out on her own, and the first Vera Wang salon opened in 1990 at the Carlyle Hotel in the heart of the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Now, Wang has written a fascinating coffee-table book ("Vera Wang on Weddings," $60, HarperResource, HarperCollins Publishers) that...