His label is just over a year old, but thirtysomething designer Prabal Gurung is no neophyte. Born in Singapore, raised in Kathmandu and educated in Delhi and then New York by way of Melbourne and London, Gurung put in stints at Donna Karan and Cynthia Rowley before spending five years as design director at Bill Blass. He was recently awarded a $25,000 grant by Ecco Domani to put on a show at New York Fashion Week, and will be one of 12 designers mentored during a two-year residence in New York’s Garment District as part of the CFDA Fashion Incubator Program. Meanwhile, stylish women of every age are wearing Gurung’s clothes. His earliest and most prodigious patron was Demi Moore, who favours his one-shoulder, monochromatic cocktail dresses, and ingenues like Carey Mulligan (in black beaded chiffon) and Zoe Saldana (in a short scarlet frock with an oversized bow) have followed suit. Red-carpet fixture Rachel Weisz looked elegant as always at a Cartier party sheathed in strapless ivory with black details, while the ever-influential Oprah sported a full-skirted red gown on the cover of O. We sat down with Gurung at the Bay’s The Room in Toronto to talk about what makes a woman beautiful, at any age.
What kind of woman do you design for? “Beauty is the obvious factor for any designer, but for me, it’s more the intelligence, the brains. Someone who is smart, confident enough to understand what she wants in life and what she wants to wear. I always find beautiful, smart women phenomenal, because they can rule the world if they want to.”
Who do you see as beautiful, smart women? “Zadie Smith, the writer Arundhati Roy. Then, if you’re talking about Hollywood, Angelina Jolie, Sandra Bullock, Demi Moore. To me, they’re like beautiful, smart women who own their own businesses.”
Do you think your dresses look different on women of different ages? “We’ve dressed Carey Mulligan, and we’ve dressed Demi, and Oprah’s in her 50s, so I feel like I’ve hit every age group. The way everyone wears it is different, obviously, they’re different individuals, but the essence of almost all the girls we’ve dressed is that none of them are vulgar.”
There’s definitely a difference between being vulgar and being sexy. “You have an option: You can ask if certain celebrities want to wear [your clothes]. And you decide, you know how they wear the clothes—even if they’re superfamous, I don’t want to give it to them if they don’t know how to wear it.”
Do you think there’s an age limit on being sexy? “Being sexy is a state of mind. What I’m talking about is the not-obvious sexy. The obvious sexy is to wear tight clothes, show your cleavage, show your butt, put everything out there. That is what some people consider sexy—I consider it vulgar. Dress appropriately for your body. I see an 18-year-old girl who’s not supposed to be wearing a cropped tank and tight jeans, butt crack hanging out—that’s not acceptable at any age. I would like to think that you’re allowed to celebrate yourself as a woman, but I do think there is a fine line of demarcation between what is vulgar and what is not.”
How do clothes help a woman get into that sexy state of mind? “Unlike building a house or buying art, it’s visual, it’s very tactile, very personal. There are dresses that you wear and you feel good. The right shoe, the right thing—you feel better, you just get a little skip in your walk.”
First published in FASHION Magazine May 2010
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