The most powerful woman in fashion you’ve never heard of

Most women, on finding a new fashion brand they admire, will seek out a piece to own, perhaps follow the brand on Instagram.

Wendy Yu, on finding a new fashion brand she admires, buys it.

Or, to be precise, the 30-year-old Chinese billionaire takes a stake in the company, with the goal of bridging the gaps between Western designers and the lucrative Chinese luxury market – valued at $US115 billion ($161 billion) by a 2018 McKinsey study – as well as the gaps between emerging Chinese designers and Western consumers.

So far, Yu has invested in British-Greek designer Mary Katrantzou, sustainable label Bottletop, shopping app Fashion Concierge (now part of Farfetch) and Samantha Cameron’s brand, Cefinn. Armed with considerable family wealth – her father, Jingyuan Yu, founded what would become Asia’s biggest door manufacturer, the Mengtian Group – she is keen to contribute to the industry she loves so much.

“I’ve always gravitated towards fashion,” she says from her office in Shanghai, where she oversees a staff of 18. “[Fashion] gives you permission to dream, it gives you freedom and confidence. I remember loving fashion magazines as a teenager, when fashion in China was deemed to be very irrelevant and frivolous. When I moved to London, that opened up a whole new side.”

After studying maths at Olympiad level as a teenager (she went on to confound her maths tutor at Cambridge with her ability to solve complex problems without a calculator), and stints at the London College of Fashion, as well as Oxford and Columbia, Yu founded Yu Capital in 2015 (in 2017 it became known as Yu Holdings) to invest in emerging fashion and technology businesses.

“I wanted to be the person who could enable and empower creative minds, and bridge the gap between the East and the West,” she says.

Yu’s powerful connections mean she calls Anna Wintour and Diane von Furstenberg mentors. She is one of Net-a-Porter’s global ambassadors, which means that every few months she is sent about 100 new pieces of clothing, curated especially for her.