Confessions of a Millennial couture collector
Fashion’s most affluent consumers don’t often go on record about their haute habits but, in a rare interview, billionaire entrepreneur Wendy Yu lets Rebecca Lowthorpe into her wonder wardrobe
Wendy Yu is not what I was expecting. My first encounter with the 27-yearold Chinese heiress is during the couture shows in July, over breakfast at the Paris Ritz. It’s 9am and she rocks up in a Dior ‘ We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt and a huge pink ball skirt by Natasha Zinko, jewelled shoes on her feet and fingers full of bling.
I explain that I want to interview a young, bona fide couture client for this, Grazia’s first luxury issue, and get some insight into what it’s like to be a moneyno-object consumer of couture – couture being the most expensive, bespoke fashion craftsmanship that money can buy. And couture clients often being the most
secretive of fashion consumers, I assume that Wendy, sole heir to her father’s business (the Mengtian Group, the biggest manufacturer of wooden doors in Asia), will need some persuading. I shouldn’t have worried. Wendy Yu may dress like an eccentric fairy-tale princess, but she is a serious businesswoman in her own right.
Make that Renaissance woman – entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder and CEO of her own business, Yu Holdings. With investments in China and Europe, in fields as diverse as transport (she was an early investor in Didi, the Asian Uber), home rentals ( Tujia, similar to our Airbnb) and fashion – she has so far invested in Mary Katrantzou, Bottle Top, a recycling business, and Fashion Concierge, an image recognition app that has just been acquired by Farfetch. She is also the youngest member of the British Fashion Council’s board of trustees and a founding member of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s ‘ Young Patrons’ Circle’. In other words, far from reliant on Daddy’s good fortune. As deeply ambitious about her business goals – ‘By the time I’m 40, I want to make Yu Holdings the leading company in the world that connects investments with creativity and philanthropy’ – as she is passionate about her collection of couture gowns.
‘I was always fully aware of how I wanted to create my own worth,’ she says when we next meet three months later. She has invited us into her ‘Lalaland’, as she calls it, one of three jaw-droppingly decadent dressing rooms in her top floor flat in London’s Knightsbridge. It’s the first time she has allowed a magazine to shoot her in her private domain – although, this isn’t where she ‘lives’, she has another hotel-serviced apartment in Mayfair for that. Here, in her home office where a gang of young Chinese collaborators are busy on their laptops and phones, every surface is festooned with fashion purchases, all of it exquisitely displayed as if curated by the local department store’s window display team – the local department store being Harrods, a stone’s lob away.
A wall of shelves groans with bags – not one ‘Lady’ Dior, but eight, variously embroidered and encrusted with gems. In fact, every piece appears to be part of its own collection, from the Charlotte Olympia bags that resemble ornate padlocked jewellery cases and the dazzling display of jewelled Manolo Blahnik heels in black, navy, pink and burgundy to her prized collection of 150 Barbie dolls, all pristine and in their original boxes.
Dressing tables display hundreds of glittering necklaces, earrings, brooches. Hat boxes are piled high, shoes are clustered in brands – Gucci’s rainbow-striped platforms (two identical pairs), satin plumed Pradas in four colourways, every kind of Choo. Fairy-tale gowns hang off doors – feathered, sequinned, cascading with waterfall frills – many by her good friends Huishan Zhang and Mary Katrantzou. And that’s far from the end of it. Down the corridor, where a sparkling midnight blue Dior couture gown is displayed on a mannequin, lies another room with rails and rails of the latest catwalk pieces – Valentino, Dior, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Giambattista Valli, Elie Saab, Ralph & Russo, Marchesa and on and on it goes…
Overwhelming doesn’t even cover it. There must be hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of pounds’ worth of fashion stock sitting here in this flat. Wendy is nothing if not the ultimate dedicated follower of fashion. And while there’s something eye-wateringly excessive about this scene, fashion businesses depend on the likes of Wendy and her enthusiastic patronage.
‘ There are two types of clothes that I buy,’ she says, pragmatically, smoothing down her velvet 1960s vintage Dior dress whose hem is encrusted with rhinestones (the London store William Vintage being her latest obsession). ‘One is superwearable, to wear every day for work – a Dior suit, an Alaïa top or even a simple all-black knit Balmain dress. The second is more collectable, as I see myself owning my own fashion museum in about five years’ time,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘So always when I buy something I think, “Will this be a part of fashion history?” Some people like art, but for me those special handbags and gowns, they are like art to me. I see them as investments and I have the joy of wearing them too.’
Wendy doesn’t work with a stylist (‘I don’t like anyone telling me what to wear’), but she does work closely with Net-a-porter – indeed, she is an ambassador, which means that before every show season, she selects approximately 100 pieces to try on: ‘I choose 10 to 20 then send the rest back.’ And, naturally, as a privileged couture client she gets to ‘co-create’ her purchases with the designers – change the colour, add a sleeve, drop a hem. ‘I love working closely with designers, they invite me to their shows and, after the runways, I pick the looks I like and
these special handbags and gowns are like art to me
they custom-make them to my needs.’
I can’t help noticing a lack of trousers in Lalaland? ‘I’m a bit conscious about my legs,’ she confides. Wendy is not your average fashion plate, more a voluptuous size 12, so I wonder if it bothers her buying clothes from designers who prefer to show their collections on matchstick-thin models? ‘Oh for sure, there shouldn’t be just one standard of beauty,’ she exclaims. ‘I used to be a size 8 in my early twenties and my body has changed and I’m embracing it. But that’s what fashion for me is all about: making the most of what you have, expressing your own identity, showing the world proudly who you are.’
So who is Wendy Yu? Born in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, to a tycoon entrepreneur father and an English teacher mother, she was raised in China’s one-child-one-family era. ‘Although they never expressed it, I feel a huge expectation to pass on the family legacy, to make my parents proud.’ Her father made all the doors in People’s Hall (the equivalent of the White House) and built the house she grew up in, which classmates referred to as ‘a temple’. ‘My parents were the first generation of my family to go to university so they are very modern and democratic compared to most Chinese parents and they instilled in me a great work ethic.’
I’m not sure if Wendy is joking when she says as a child she studied from 7am until midnight every day. ‘My mum put me into very vigorous maths training,’ she explains, which led to her winning the gold medal in a maths challenge when she came to the UK, aged 16. ‘My maths tutors were quite astonished that I didn’t use a calculator.’ She also learned piano from the age of six and still plays Chopin and Beethoven on the baby grand Steinway downstairs – her only extravagant purchase outside of fashion.
Her parents expected her to study at Oxford or Cambridge but she rebelled and enrolled at the London College of Fashion. ‘ They were so shocked and asked me, “Why would you do that? Are you going to sell clothes?” I said, “No, but I’m going to do something great.”’ Had she walked the traditional path appointed to her, she would be working for her father, married and most likely a mother by now. ‘Imagine, in my grandmother’s and mother’s generation it was impossible to be a woman entrepreneur. But there are certain boundaries that you need to break. People in China are still expecting women’s priorities to be giving birth and being a good mother and wife,’ says the feminist, adding, ‘I think I am more than a feminist.’
So is it exhausting being a billionaire, I ask? She reddens (and her PR politely reminds me that in Chinese culture it is considered vulgar to use the term ‘ billionaire’). I wonder what a typical day looks like when she’s not zipping in and out of meetings from East to West? She wakes at 5am and meditates with a master for half an hour, then she does one of two daily face masks while listening to Chinese personal development programmes – anything from philosophy to business management – on an audio app. Sometimes she squeezes in a spin class or a spa visit.
What about downtime, does she ever just slob out in front of the TV? ‘No, no!’ she looks aghast at the thought. ‘I listen to more audio books so my day is full of inspiration.’ She’s the epitome of discipline, I suggest. ‘Not when it comes to food, I embrace it all! English breakfasts, scones and cream, Chinese hotpot!’ And, of course, during event season, she’s out-out. ‘Sometimes it’s two a night – a charity do, say, or co-hosting a designer friend’s dinner. Social events can be exhausting,’ she sighs. Still, at least she gets to wear her couture.