Will the Vera Wang fairy tale fall apart at the seams?

By Sarah LeTrent, CNN

(CNN) – Last week, powerhouse wedding gown designer Vera Wang announced that she and her husband of 23 years, Arthur Becker, were separating.

"Vera Wang and Arthur Becker have mutually and amicably agreed to separate. They remain devoted parents to their two daughters," Mario Grauso, the president of the Vera Wang Group, said in a statement to CNN.

The couple married in 1989 when Wang was a design director at Ralph Lauren and Becker was a stockbroker at Bear Stearns & Co. Before her tenure at Ralph Lauren, Wang worked at Vogue magazine for more than 15 years.

Wang, 63, launched her label in 1990, a year after her own wedding, with a prestigious Madison Avenue address on New York City's Upper East Side. She opened Bridal House Ltd., as it was called at the time, because she noticed something was missing from bridal gowns during her own wedding planning: art.

Tamara Albu, an associate professor of fashion design at Parsons The New School of Design, said Wang revolutionized the way people looked at the wedding gown; she upped the sophistication and made the gown an expression of a state of mind, not just a marker of a special occasion.

"She understands women who embrace fashion. In her case, she markets the wedding gown as a personification of love and beauty, not herself," she said.

However, Wang's recent announcement has caused speculation as to whether her fairy-tale aesthetic will be affected by her own not-so-happily-ever-after ending.

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