Vera Wang - Articles - Zimbio

Looking Forward- Planning a Vintage French Themed Wedding

Tue, 1 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

posted by Blairdel

Travel Update- Wednesday, October 1st- I'm heading home today my friends! I'm sure I'll be excited to get back to tell you, and anyone who will listen, all about Africa, but also sad to say goodbye. Hopefully the long, long flights will go smoothly; full of movies, cocktails, reading, long naps, and reliving every minute of our great big adventure. See you soon!

Today's guest blog post comes to us from a bride at the tail end of her wedding planning process. The unbelievably lovely Justine has met Kurt, her Mr. Right, and has planned a wedding that perfectly represents the things she loves. Grab a drink (preferably a glass of pink champagne) or a sweet treat (preferably a little French pastry) and read all about her stunning vintage French themed wedding plans.

(Photo of Justine and Kurt by La Vie Photography)

I am so excited to share my wedding plans with you! As I write, my wedding is less than two weeks away! It’s hard to believe that it’s finally here. I was one of those girls who started reading wedding magazines and pulling pictures at age 12. My mom started collecting Martha Stewart Weddings as soon as the first copy hit the newsstand. While in my 20’s, my mom and I pretended I was engaged so we couldtry on wedding dresses (more than once, I am ashamed to admit!). This inadvertently led to a job in the bridal industry, and at the age of 27 I moved to New York to work as a bridal consultant at the Vera Wang salon on Madison Avenue. I worked there for 4 years, and, yes, I have stories! Did you ever read about the girl who stepped on a pin and sued for $2 million? That was my customer.

I moved back home to Seattle 2 years ago, met my wonderful Kurt, and got engaged last Christmas, which was the happiest day of my life so far. And then I realized I had to actually plan a wedding! The first thing you need to know is that my mom had stopped collecting Martha Stewart Weddings, because the poor woman had given up hope. Fortunately, I had access to plenty from my years in bridal, so I made a color copy of every page I liked from every issue I had. Tear them out, you say? Don't you know it's a sacrilege to tear pages out of Martha? I made a binder and realized that I had so many ideas I loved, I didn’t even know where to begin!

(Vera Wang dress via Brides.com)

The first thing I did was choose my dress. I will admit that I had my dress picked out way before he asked, and by that I mean, before I even met him! It is a gorgeous ivory Vera Wang chantilly lace sheath, with a low, ruffled neckline that skims the shoulders, sprinkled with clover-shaped sequins, and finished with a belt of ivory velvet covered in handmade champagne silk chiffon roses. My mom and I were thrilled to discover that it matched my grandmother’s veil from her 1939 wedding perfectly!

With a vintage vibe going, I set out to find a wedding venue. Kurt and I both loved the idea of being married in a church, and when we saw St. Paul’s Church in Port Gamble, we looked no further. It was built in 1867 along the designs of a church found in Maine, and has the most beautiful blue walls inside. I can’t wait to walk down the aisle with my dad, then hear the church bells ring as I step outside with my new husband!

(Images of St. Paul's Church via MyWedding.com and PortGambleWeddings.com)

Like all brides, I really wanted my wedding to be unique and reflect my personal style. I love everything vintage; beautiful fabrics, ruffles, ribbons, feathers, and flowers, and my favorite color is pink. My challenge was, how to do pink without having it look like Trista and Ryan’s wedding?

To set the tone, I sent out beautiful invitations from the Folios of M. Thomas, chosen with the assistance of Ann Stuhlberg of Stuhlberg’s on Queen Anne. The invitations have an understated but very romantic watercolor ribbon theme, with lovely calligraphy. Everyone who received them commented on how pretty they were!

I chose Aria Style to decorate the church and adjoining tent. Lars, John, and Susan have been so wonderful to work with! I am thrilled that they will be with me on the day of the wedding. Together we took my love of Paris, Marie Antoinette, and all things feminine, and created a very romantic look for the day.

We are using gold chiavari chairs, soft peach taffeta linens with ribbon rosette embroidery, and pale pink draping to give the tent a gorgeous glow. Slightly undone arrangements of pink roses, ranunculus, and dahlias set in silver champagne coolers will sit on the tables, surrounded by mercury glass votives. The centerpiece of the tent will be the cake table, piled Marie Antoinette style with jewel-toned tartlets and a pink cake adorned with madeleines from Bakery Nouveau! The crowning jewel will be, well, a vintage-looking crown!

Pink champagne served in coupes (which, legend has it, were made in the shape of Marie Antoinette’s breasts) will hopefully get everyone in the mood to pose in our photo booth! It will feature a wonderfully whimsical Parisian backdrop painted by our dear friend and artist, Judy Wise, of Canby, Oregon. Props for guests to play with include a Marie Antoinette wig, berets, feather boas and fans, and if I can find my French maid outfit…..

(Marie Antoinette movie images from IMDB.com and NYTimes.com, bridal bouquet, wedding cake, mercury glass collections and centerpieces from MarthaStewart.com, champagne coupe glasses from Crate and Barrel, custom photobooth backdrop painted by Judy Wise, Louis Bouillot Cremant de Bourgogne Rosé via KLWines.com, invitations from the Folios of M. Thomas.)

To further set the mood, Steve Rice, a wonderful accordionist, and his band will play French café music during dinner, then segue into New York piano bar standards for dancing.

I am so excited to have Kim and Adam Bamberg of La Vie Photography there to document the day. After photographing my sister Liesl’s wedding 6 weeks ago, they feel like family! I feel so fortunate that every vendor I’ve chosen for my wedding is also someone I would love to have as a wedding guest and a friend.

Most of all, I hope that it will be a day for family and friends to enjoy. I think it is so easy to get wrapped up in the wedding and all the details, and forget that everyone is coming together to witness the beginning of a new chapter in your life. I just started working on my wedding vows yesterday, and thought to myself, “Why am I doing this last?” I am so happy to have finally met the right man. The rest is just the (pink) frosting on the cake.

Thanks Justine! We can't wait to see your photos and hear about how it all went! Readers, stay tuned for her upcoming Real Wedding! Want a sneak peek at how it all turned out go to http://lifeofkimandadam.blogspot.com/.

Holiday SEO: Using Amazon Bestsellers for Keyword Research

Tue, 20 Aug 2008 13:00:28 GMT

posted by Ecommerce

Wanna do some extremely cheap (free) and fast market research? As lovely as Google Trends, Google Insights and Google’s Keyword Tool are - they are not as valuable as Amazon for commercial keyword research. They can’t tell you which products are most wished for and most gifted.

Though it’s hidden amongst a jungle of other links, products and calls to action - Amazon has a Bestsellers department. On the Amazon.com home page, scroll down to Features & Services / Amazon Exclusives / Amazon Bestsellers (or just click our link).

You’ll find every category that Amazon offers (which is pretty much everything) and even sub-categories.

And you’ll notice you can select the Most Gifted and Most Wished For items, based on Amazon’s tsunami of customer tracking and purchase data.

For example, if you’re in the beauty category, you can see the top 3 wished for fragrances are Vera Wang Princess, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue and Marc Jacobs Daisy.

Comparing to Sephora’s best seller list, this is pretty good data.

So What?

When you understand what customers’ most desired and most gifted items are, you know where to focus your SEO efforts at the product page level as we approach the holiday season. And by SEO efforts, I mean link building.

If I were Sephora, I would head over to the search engine and scope out the ranking situation (making sure I’m signed out of my Gmail account so my rankings aren’t skewed by my frequent visits to the Sephora site). Now it doesn’t really matter what position you are in the results - results may vary based on a searcher’s location, browsing history (personalized search) and exact keyword term (rankings may differ for “vera wang princess” vs “princess vera wang”). And there’s always room for improvement when it comes to link building.

But you want to get an idea of which pages you are competing against. Is it Amazon? The manufacturer’s site? A popular blog review or shopping engine? Also, you want to know if you have a hope in the North Pole to actually rank for the product. If you’re not on page one or two, you may want to think realistically about your chances. Or, aim for a less competitive search like “buy vera wang princess” or “princess by vera wang.”

Okay, keeping with our hypothetical Sephora case:

Sephora is doing really well, and it’s tough to outrank the manufacturer site but we’ve seen it happen. Also, assuming Sephora’s competition reads Get Elastic and is embarking on link building campaignage as we speak, Sephora must protect its position. The key will be to build links (and start soon), and here are some ideas to accomplish this.

Leverage the Blog

Sephora has, in my opinion, one of the better retailer blogs out there. It actually has several posts linking to its Marc Jacobs Daisy page. But linking from a new blog post that includes “Marc Jacobs Daisy” in the title tag and URL will give extra topical relevance to the link. I’d go ahead and write a post on how it’s one of the top sellers, what customers have to say about it or which celebrities wear it.

Blogger Outreach

Why not make a list of influential beauty bloggers and send them a free Vera Wang Princess bottle or sample to review? As long as the review is appreciated but not required, I don’t see how this would violate the “don’t buy links” rule. Of course, I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments.

It works for quirky lounge chair maker Sumo. Top Internet marketing and advertising blogger B.L. Ochman calls Sumo’s blogger outreach smart marketing:

Sumo has used blogger outreach to get their furniture reviewed, and it’s smart marketing. Sending chairs to bloggers is cheap; effective because you feel like you need to review something that costs more than $100; and, unlike a book, way too big to ignore once it gets to your house. They didn’t send some stupid press release, or cutesy pitch. They just sent an email asking if I’d like to try the chair and review it, with a link to the site.

Sumo ranks quite nicely for terms like “lounge chair” and “bean bag chair,” thank you very much.

Search for Conversations

Who’s been blogging about Vera Wang Princess? Two tools I like to use to find out are blog search engine Technorati and reputation monitoring tool Trackur. These both have advantages over Google Blogs search.

Technorati shows you an authority score (higher is better), so you don’t waste time checking out low-quality blogs:

And Trackur lets you bookmark items with “Add to Favorites.”

You may discover some interesting things, like this blog that actually did link to Sephora:

But as you can see in the status bar, the blogger buggered up the link with a cut-and-paste so it reads http://http//www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P212915&shouldPaginate=true&categoryId=5625 which sends people and search engines to a dead page.

Sephora should send this blogger a heads up, and some form of thank you for linking (coupon or free gift). And to build a relationship, ask if she’d like to be an official reviewer for Sephora products on her own blog.

Help a Reporter Out

Get on Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help A Reporter Out), a thrice-daily mailing list of press opportunities. I’ve seen requests for sources from reporters from major news papers, magazines and even network TV morning shows. Several calls for products for gift ideas have come through. Getting on the list to receive the notices is easy, sign up here. You could get a link or great word-of-print marketing.

Don’t Forget Value Propositions

Sephora not only ships for free over $50, but also has free return shipping.

This should be in the title tag / meta description. Especially for searches like this:

This will also improve click through for searches without “free shipping” as we discussed yesterday.

So try out Amazon Bestsellers for the category/ies you sell - and remember, you can apply this insight to email marketing campaigns and merchandising strategies too. If you have additional link building tricks, you may want to keep them close to your chest. If you’re brave and already in the holiday spirit, you may want to share them in the comments here *wink.*

And before you ask why you should bother building links to product pages that may get dropped from your site in a year or sooner, come back tomorrow. We’ll explain how to handle this.

I Know I Should Be A/B Testing But…

Free Webinar: September 11th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder and Executive VP, FutureNow, Inc.
Register to Attend...

Vera Wang's Fashion Jewelry

Sun, 10 Nov 2008 01:45:40 GMT

posted by gorgeousfun

This is Vera Wang's ode to costume jewelry. These two beautiful necklaces were featured in Vogue July 2008. She is taking a fresh look at this art. Vera Wang even has a new name for this jewelry: fashion jewelry. Truly gorgeous!

Simply Vera. Simply Disappointing, or Not?

Wed, 28 Aug 2008 12:03:00 GMT

posted by christinalee01
Back in the day when I lived in NY and was an aspiring stylist, I interned for a short time at Vera Wang. Of course I didn't work directly for her, but I always tried to steal glimpses of her while she worked. I made it a point to walk down the hallway towards the room she was working in. She was always very gracious to say hello when you walked past her in the hallway, but you got the impression that she was a very busy woman. One of the other perks of the job is that I got to work up close with the dresses. Oh, the dresses. So.Very.Astonishingly.Beautiful. I pictured myself wearing one to my wedding or to a red carpet event. Neither happened. Darn. :)

But while I was there, I also always made sure to notice what she was wearing. What struck me was how very simply she dressed. Thus the name, Simply Vera Wang, for Kohl's? When I first heard last year that she was creating a line for Kohl's, I was elated. I went to the store specifically to own something of hers. But I was quickly disappointed. I wasn't fond of the designs she created, most seemed to be boxy or schlumpy looking, and cheaply made. I know, what was I expecting from Kohl's? But her line there is considered more high end than the other lines and thus priced that way. So if I was going to spend my money on say, an $80 cardigan, I wanted it to look and feel great. But it didn't.

Now, I'm not a huge Kohl's shopper, but my sister is, and inevitably she drags me there with her and always finds great deals. I have had success with the Daisy Fuentes line with jeans and the Apt. 9 line with tops. A couple of weeks ago, I was drawn to a display of Vera's line and decided to take a second look. And I was pleasantly surprised this time around. I actually liked what I saw and found a top that I liked. It fit nicely too. I didn't purchase it but plan on returning to do just that.
So I can finally own a Vera, along with the rest of middle America. But isn't this what it's all about? The whole movement of designers to appeal to us regular folks, who otherwise would not be able to experience their designs, except when watching coverage of the red carpet? Sure it demystifies the designer a bit, but accessibility is not all bad. Check out what I found of Vera's at Kohl's.

New Vera Wang Mattress in Latex with Aloe Vera

Tue, 20 Aug 2008 15:23:51 GMT

posted by zedomax

At the Las Vegas Bedding Market recently, Vera Wang via Serta introduced the latest in her mattress collection. The new line is in 11.5 thick latex foam and features organic cotton with aloe-vera ticking, which helps regulate the temperature of the latex bed.

The Ultra Cushion Top mattress is the ultimate in luxury, featuring an extra upholstery layer in addition to the layer of Embraceable Comfort™ lining designed to provide a soft, plush feeling.
Comfort is further enhanced by Talalay Latex (designed to relieve pressure points) and Cool Embrace™ Memory foam, a unique layer of Visco foam that eliminates the heat typically associated with Visco mattresses, providing a cool, comfortable sleeping experience.
Mattress features the iconic vine pattern found in other Vera Wang signature products.
Rayon/silk damask treated with aloe vera.
Includes Vera Wang Luxe Foundation box spring.
Queen Set: 24 1/4″H x 80″L x 60″W

Via Neiman Marcus

Brought to you by: MATTRESS Online Magazine - The Mattress Blog

New Vera Wang Mattress in Latex with Aloe Vera

Vera Wang - Articles - Zimbio

Looking Forward- Planning a Vintage French Themed Wedding

Holiday SEO: Using Amazon Bestsellers for Keyword Research

So What?

Don’t Forget Value Propositions

I Know I Should Be A/B Testing But…

You may also like these similar posts:

Vera Wang's Fashion Jewelry

Simply Vera. Simply Disappointing, or Not?

New Vera Wang Mattress in Latex with Aloe Vera