Jason Wu
Jason Wu
Jason Wuis a Taiwanese-born Canadian fashion designer based in New York City. He is most famous for designing the dresses of Michelle Obama on several occasions, including during the first and second inauguration of American President Barack Obama...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionFashion Designer
Date of Birth27 September 1982
CityTaipei, Taiwan
CountryCanada
dresses imagined knew moved
When I moved to America, I knew I wanted to be a designer. I never imagined one of my dresses would end up in the Smithsonian.
limited
I never thought of myself as being limited to fashion. I'm a designer, and if you have a vision, you can apply that to anything.
girl littles glamour
I love a little bit of glamour and I love tall girls.
beautiful mean thinking
I think a beautiful dress on the wrong woman could mean nothing. It has to be the right woman and the right clothes. That's why you need that personal touch. I mean, that's why I went into this business to begin with.
keys archives pieces
I realized the importance of archiving. So I save key pieces from my collections, as well as any red-carpet things that become iconic. I always ask for that stuff back. I'm like, "It's going in my archives."
keys one-day archives
I woke up one day and I was like, "I don't have anything to save for myself for the future." That's when I started archiving things. I take four or five things that are really key to each collection, and I restore them or, in some cases, remake parts of them, and archive them.
two creating next
You're always in the mode of creating the next season. It's so fast, and in two months, the collection you just did is already old, and it's always next, next, next.
kids home parent
In American culture you leave home at 18. In the Asian culture, your parents don't really want you to leave home. So my parents just thought I was going to be one of those kids. I was like, "I'm never going to make a living at whatever I do." I just liked pretty things.
fashion magazines canada
I didn't understand anything about fashion until I moved to Canada when I was 9. That's when I learned English and was exposed to fashion magazines.
bullying school hard-times
I had a hard time in middle school. I was never really quite me until I was 16 or 17, and things like bullying didn't matter anymore.
new-york nice thinking
It's nice to be able to be whoever you want to be. I moved to New York for that reason. I think I am a very good example of how you really can do whatever you want to do without having any kind of prerequisite experience of any of kind of connection. None of my family members came from this world.
mom sweat always-trying
I was very preppy in my childhood. I also went through an anti-clothing moment where I just wanted to wear sweats because I'd just moved to Canada. My mom was always trying to get me into proper clothes, but I never wanted to wear them, and now that's all I wear.
fashion the-end-of-the-day done
This is the hardest thing I've ever done, being in fashion business, because that's what it is at the end of the day, a business, and you have to make sure it works.
thinking careers voice
I think it's really important to make things your own in your voice. I started when I was 23, and in the beginning of my career, there was this expectation of a young designer being edgier, cooler, more downtown. But I was never that person.