Born in Yokohama, Japan, Miyuki Liem Bridgewater grew up in the Indonesian city of Surabaya on the island of Java, and an early interest in drawing led her to a career in fashion design. She received formal training and a diploma from LaSalle College in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta and then continued her studies at the Raffles Design Institute in Singapore. She graduated in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree of art with first honors, and spent the next 10 years working as an in-house designer for a bridal design company in Singapore.
Miyuki Liem met Storm Bridgewater at a party in Singapore in 2011. After their marriage two years later, they moved to Surabaya where she opened her first design company, Miyuki Halim Bridal. She also worked as a fashion illustration lecturer at Universitas Ciputra Surabaya. In 2016, she received her green card, and the family moved to Honolulu.
Her company, Miyuki Liem Bridal, specializes in designing handmade luxury couture bridal gowns. In September, she was featured in Brides magazine as one of eight Asian American and Pacific Islander wedding-dress designers to celebrate, sharing the billing with bridal gown doyenne Vera Wang and celebrity favorite Tadashi Shoji.
Bridgewater, 37, and her husband welcomed their second child in December.
How do you balance work and being the mother of a 7-year-old and a newborn?
I took a month off. But I have a few clients that I’m still working with for their weddings, so I sew gowns when I have time. Usually I work while my first daughter is at school, or in the evening when she’s already asleep. I meet clients in between.
Do brides in Singapore and Indonesia have different preferences in gown designs than brides here?
Brides there like huge gowns, really shimmery with a lot of details. Brides here want something more simple, easy to wear. And then — ‘cause the weather here is also kind of hot — I use pure silk that is cooling when you wear it.
Do clients come to you with specific ideas, or do they say, “Design me something?”
Both. I have a collection that brides can try in my shop. Some of them come in and try them on, then they choose one and I make a brand-new one for them. Some email me a few pictures and say, “Can you make me something like this? I want something like this. Can you design it for me?” And some say they don’t have any idea. … Usually the ones from the mainland or abroad who are getting married in Hawaii send pictures and say, “I want something like this. Can you make it for me or design it for me?” From there, we choose the fabric and the color.
What should people know about your designs?
A lot of my brides ask me where I get my gowns from. I explain that I make them all myself from scratch here in my house. They always think gowns are machine-made, but mine are basically couture — all handmade. The fabric I resource by myself from around the world, basically ‘cause when I worked in Singapore that’s how my boss got the fabric. Maybe it’s a shell from India and then lace from Germany. Some of the laces now I get from Indonesia, so each gown is really one of a kind.
Assuming that you have time to do anything other than work on gowns and care for two young children, what do you enjoy doing?
I enjoy drawing. Basically that’s what made me interested in fashion. I loved drawing. That’s what got me started. I wanted to become an illustrator. Then I went to fashion school and learned how to make patterns, how to sew, and then I fell in love with sewing. And then I got a job in bridal industry, then fell in love with making wedding dresses. For all my brides abroad, I always sketch first for them so they can know how the gown will look.
Is there something that you would like to be doing or to have completed 10 years from now?
I wish to have my own shop with a display window and have my own bridal fashion show. In Asia it’s done every year.
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Reach John Berger at jberger@staradvertiser.com.
