Liu Wen, 21 year old 5 foot 10 from China became the first Victoria’s Secret model of Asian descent to walk the catwalk. The newest addition to the Victoria’s Secret family was born in Yongzhou in China’s Hunan province in 1988, the daughter of an interior designer dad and a stay-at-home mom.
She was in high school when, on a whim, she submitted photos for a modeling contest, hoping to win the top prize of a laptop computer. Later did she know that it would lead her to the Victoria’s Secret runway in New York.
Accordig to Monica Mitro, the show’s executive producer, “Liu Wen is a beautiful woman. She has a strong and energetic presence on the runway. She looked absolutely stunning in our fashion show,”
“I was surprised when my agent told me,” Wen said hours before she was set to walk the runway. She seemed only slightly overwhelmed: clad in a pink robe, one technician assigned to her fingernails, another to her toenails and another adding extensions to her already long black hair. “I asked my agent if she was joking. I didn’t think an Asian girl would get this job.”
Wen made her runway debut in Milan, Italy, in 2008, followed quickly by Paris, France, and New York fashion weeks where she walked in such shows as Anna Sui, Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen, Chloé and Lanvin. Although her walk down the runway will be a first for Victoria’s Secret, Wen is part of a growing trend for Asian models worldwide that began several years ago with Devon Aoki. The past few seasons of fashion shows have featured Asian models on almost every high-end runway.
