In January, 2008, Wu won Fashion Group International’s Rising Star award. One year later, this 27-year-old from Taipei had one of his designs in the Smithsonian Institution. That design was the gown Michelle Obama wore to the balls celebrating her husband’s inauguration as the President of the United States. Wu, who moved with his family to Vancouver when he was 9 and studied sculpture in Tokyo when he was 14, spent his senior year of high school in Paris, where he decided to become a designer. He then enrolled at Parsons School of Design and interned with Narciso Rodriguez. Wu debuted his own collection in 2006.