Wong's world: designer becoming a force in L.A. fashion.

SITTING behind a large, glass desk in her spacious office at a busy corner in Koreatown, designer Sue Wong--with her bold jewelry, austere dress, sculpted eyebrows and smooth, cropped hairdo--has the ethereal quality of a queen at the top of her reign.

Wong's majesty doesn't come from being above the struggles of ordinary workers. She's gone through plenty.

Before the age of 30, Wong ascended to the heights of her profession, with four homes and a $225,000 annual salary. But she lost it all after a difficult divorce and a disastrous attempt to start her own company.

"You can't just be a dreamy designer and expect to succeed. I failed miserably not knowing how to run a business," Wong recalled. "Being young and unrealistic, I thought I could get it back in two minutes, but it took 15 years. That was humbling."

Since then, though, the 56-year-old Chinese immigrant has fully rebounded, and has become known as an L.A. fashion institution for her elaborately detailed evening wear.

She has three homes--in Hawaii, Malibu and Los Feliz--and her own company, Studio S Inc. that racked up over $40 million in sales last year, up from $1.5 million about seven years earlier.

Wong is now looking to expand her business in the next four years to reach $60 million to $70 million in sales. She's also exploring ways to license the Sue Wong brand for such products as furniture, cosmetics, shoes and handbags; and she's considering opening retail stores.

"My whole strategy was to build it up to a high level of visibility. I feel my time has come finally," Wong said.

Wong's dresses are bought by mid- to high-end department stores such as Macy's, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus and worn to bar mitzvahs, black-tie dinners and weddings across the U.S. and 24 other countries.

Sumiko Biller, owner of the store Sumiko in Santa Monica, said one customer wore a Sue Wong creation to meet the queen of England. "They are always fitted at the waist, they are flattering, glamorous," she said. "Her stuff has a classic look."

Wong realizes she can only go so far with evening wear. She's added tops and has made her dresses more contemporary for daytime use as well. Still, opening retail stores and licensing is an exercise fraught with pitfalls.

Lifestyle brand

Wong's dresses are moderately priced, usually between $200 and $600 in stores, and sell to a wide range of customers, ranging from prom-going teens to older women attending special events.

Wong is reaching out to licensees that can push items into parts of department stores and boutiques where she isn't already available.

Wong also plans to open a flagship store, probably in West Hollywood, in about a year and about two or three stores after that. Those will be the only company-owned units, but she wants to franchise her concept.

But a past attempt to build her own label went awry.

In her 20s, Wong became the lead designer for now defunct fashion company Arpeja, where revenues soared to over $50 million from $3 million in three years. Buoyed by the sales, she left Arpeja to create her own label. But she couldn't immediately repeat her early success.

Instead, Wong said she was swindled by "con artists" she blames for the downfall of her company. At the same time, she was embroiled in a divorce. Her homes were sold, and she ended up renting a house in Westlake Village, where she brought in her parents to help her raise two sons.

Wong didn't abandon the idea of her own label, though. She worked as a designer at other companies and, eventually, in the mid-1980s, plowed $380,000 she had saved to start her own label again.

Before 1999, she made a hodgepodge of clothes, including dresses, jackets and tops. But with the millennium coming up, she designed a collection of 25 cocktail and evening dresses for women going to New Year's parties. It took off and Wong carved out a niche.

"There has to be a consistency of product. Now, I am a bona fide evening resource," she said. "I am a maximalist, not a minimalist. I have so much fun with all the details. The evening category fits my aesthetic sensibilities."

With special occasion her staple, Wong's designs became easy for stores to recognize. They could promise their customers, season after season, that her clothes would be suitable for parties and weddings. But she also keeps her dresses selling by making sure they don't become stale and markets over 1,000 garments per year.

"She comes out with so many collections a year and nothing is really repeated, so that gives the dresses a uniqueness," said Ilana McPhee, operations manager of the Wardrobe, a store in Davis.

Staff reporter Emily Bryson York can be reached at [phone], ext. 235, or at [e-mail].