East Meets Dress Emerges On Peninsula From Founder's Wedding Day

REDWOOD CITY, CA — Young women often dream of how a wedding day can transform their lives.

For the founders of a new San Francisco Peninsula-based startup, East Meets Dress, the meeting of the minds changed the two lives of the bride Jen Qiao and her maid of honor Vivian Chan.

Both women had bright traditional futures as freshmen at Yale University — Chan majoring in biology to become a doctor; Qiao majoring in global affairs to merge her business acumen with an international calling. She was bound for the Google boardroom.

But while planning for Qiao's wedding, the longtime friends discovered it was difficult to find traditional Asian fashion that the bride wanted to wear on her wedding day to embrace her heritage.

"I wanted to wear something that honored my Asian American background. We were shocked to find there were no options out there," she told Patch. "Entrepreneurs are not in my family, but I thought about what would truly make me happy."

The lightbulb came on.

Now, they're surprised to realize how many other Asian-American women have clamored to find just the very same thing.

"It was a problem we wanted to help solve," Chan said.

Thus, the fashion startup that’s on a mission to reinvent the iconic cheongsam dress for modern women was born and has thrived for a year with a growing team and six-figure revenue to plug into the balance sheet.

Balance is something Chan and Qiao are all about. As first generation Asian-Americans, they're proud of their heritage and bold enough to pull off the blending of the two East-meets-West cultures. They had no prior experience in fashion but know what it means to work hard and work smart.

Their mantra is something to behold for the modern Asian woman:

"We are Asian-Americans. We have high expectations for ourselves, our future and the products we buy. We were taught straight A's only come to those who work hard.

We straddle between two worlds and two words, Asian and American.

We love dancing our hearts out to Beyonce on Friday nights but love a good dimsum and egg tart the morning after. We carry within us traditions from our parents’ generation but aren’t afraid to redefine them into something we embrace.

We are grateful for our parents’ sacrifices, but don’t sacrifice our own path or style for their approval. Whether we speak Chinglish or not, we demand to be heard."