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.”