Who

Doo-Ri Chung is the creator of the Doo.Ri womenswear label and a rising star on the fashion scene.

Backstory

Doo-Ri was born in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. with her family at the age of four, settling in Ramsey, New Jersey, where her parents operated a dry cleaning business. Her interest in design materialized early on: As a kid, she spent her free time working on fashion sketches, and after high school she enrolled at Parsons where she won the school's "Designer of the Year" award during her senior year. After graduating in 1995, she took a job as an assistant menswear designer at Banana Republic; dissatisfied with life inside a big company, she lasted six months before leaving to take an apprenticeship under Geoffrey Beene. She spent six years there—during which time she rose to the position of lead designer—until 2001, when she struck out on her own. Retreating to the rent-free basement of her parents' dry cleaning operation in Paramus, she busily assembled the jersey dresses that would constitute her line; on the side, she teamed up with a friend to opened a boutique in SoHo, Klee. (The store closed in 2002.) She now works from a space in the Garment District and her dresses—which retail for $1,500 and up—can be found on the racks at Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and Jeffrey. Her financial backer is Haresh Tharani of Tharanco Group, who used to own Bill Blass.

Of note

Chung's rags-to-riches story made her an unlikely underdog fashion hero: "She's special because her career is like the libretto of an opera. She's the little seamstress in New Jersey who sat at her machine and produced wondrous clothes that all the sophisticated people in New York loved right from the start," explained CFDA president Stan Herman. Her elegant designs have earned her the slavish attention of the international style press and she's been embraced by everyone from fashion editors to the likes of Tinsley Mortimer. First nominated in 2004 when the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award was established, Chung ended up losing to Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler. 2006 proved much more successful: She nabbed the Swarovski/Perry Ellis award for emerging talent in June and then in November took home the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize, beating out Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte and Thakoon Panichgul of Thakoon. Chung took her first mass steps in 2007 when she created a capsule collection for the Gap, which sold out almost immediately.

True story

Chung appeared in Seamless, Douglas Keeve's documentary about the 2004 CFDA awards. Viewers' heartstrings were soundly plucked by the spectacle of her parents' business–and her basement studio–burning down in the run up to the competition deadline, although it later emerged that the fire happened a month after the winner was announced.

Personal

In 2006, Chung married Jeffrey Green, who works on the business side of her label. They live in Chelsea.