Vera Wang Wants to Teach You to Party

“Listen, I’m not ashamed to admit that I really enjoy a good drink,” confides Vera Wang. “Don’t you?”

Sure. In fact, while it’s 5 o’clock somewhere, it’s 11 A.M. on my floor, where I’m wearing a man’s oxford shirt as a dress while sipping prosecco straight from the bottle. Granted, it’s a bottle of Vera Wang prosecco—we’ll get to this in a minute—but I’m young-ish and cool-adjacent. Surely a few gulps of spiked designer fizz can only heighten my allure.

As for Wang, when it comes to allure, she needs zero help. The New Yorker’s name is synonymous with wedding belles, including Ariana Grande’s most-recent “I do” gown. (“She can’t comment on that,” says her publicist. “I will say, it’s so hard to work in charmeuse,” Wang allows. “And I think it’s evident from all my dresses, anytime you’re on the red carpet or you’re at a party or in my store, I am fanatical about quality. I don’t care if it’s a t-shirt or a ballgown or a wedding gown, it needs to be perfection or it won’t be from me.”) Wang also has a runway collection, a diffusion line at Kohl’s, seven fragrances, and a series of swimsuit thirst traps on IG that rival Kylie Jenner’s. Also: She will be 72 this month.

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“I live alone, obviously,” she says. “And so those photos were taken during quarantine as kind of a laugh, but also a real refusal to give up. I had a collection to promote with no models, no photographer, no hair, no makeup… But I was in Miami, and you know, you cannot beat Miami sunlight at 5 P.M. It is goddamn gold, you know what I mean? You could be Jack the Ripper in front of it and he would look good… So I said, ‘Look, we’ve got these barrettes we want to show. Let me just put them on Instagram.’ I threw on a [Palm Angels] sports bra because it was too hot for anything else; it was like 95 degrees! I didn’t expect the reaction to be so huge. I just thought we were just selling some barrettes!”

Then came the thirsty DMs—“You would be really shocked,” she quips—and the tabloid admissions that she doesn’t really work out or even think about her model-dupe abs. (The Chinese-American designer was a competitive figure skater, but stopped after the 1968 national championships.) “I think the technique for a great post, or for my favorite posts anyway, is the unique humor you bring to it. The real trick, I’ve found, is be a little kooky. Make it a party, even if it’s a party of one.”

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It’s that concept—be your own party—that Wang has bottled and branded with her new Prosecco, which is indeed called Party. Created in the world-renowned vineyards of Vincenza, Italy, the drink boasts citrus notes, a soft finish, and a hint of apple and stone fruit—“It’s so much like creating a fragrance, putting it together,” Wang says—and tastes gorgeous both straight and with peach nectar or orange juice. (Yes, I have tried all three. Trust.)

But why does very busy, very successful Vera Wang need to enter the wine market—especially when celebs like Cameron Diaz and Nina Dobrev are already making it their next act? “I don’t think of it in terms of, ‘We need a Prosecco,’” answers Wang. “I think in terms of, ‘How are we creating our own world of charm and fun and style? And what can live in that world?’ Our brand has quite a bit of elastic in it; we can go places that a ‘strict’ fashion brand probably cannot. And I like to drink. I have millennial children who drink. Then there are people like my godson, who is the Z generation, and some of them are now able to drink. This is happening all around me, so I want to put my [stamp] on it.”

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Wang notes that she’s been to the ultimate party—the annual Met Gala—more often than any other invitee, and as a bridal guru, she’s seeing the way big and small events are emerging post-pandemic. “Are weddings the new Coachella?” she laughs. “Sure, absolutely. It’s become kind of a [caravan] where young people will have weddings to attend for 5 days straight. They’ll go from event to event in groups; they’ll have looks planned for every single day and night. And I think that’s amazing, and of course I want people to enjoy Party during those really big celebrations. But also,” she says, “I think you can have a really good time if you dress up just for yourself, and have a party of one.”

Or, you know, half a bottle of Party itself.

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