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Gurung credits his financial sense to his mother, who has ties to Nepal's royal family and raised him and his brother and sister in Kathmandu. "My mother is a divorced politician," he says. "That, as you can imagine, is a big deal in a place like Nepal, which is about 50 years behind the rest of the world. It's one reason I think it's okay to make mistakes. How else are you going to learn?"
By age 11, Gurung was drawing gowns on stick figures and offering free fashion advice. "Mine is the typical gay-designer story," he says. "I was taunted and teased, but I had a pile of sketchbooks and a teacher and family who encouraged me." After graduating from an all-boys Catholic high school, he traveled to India to study fashion. Eventually he attended Parsons in New York, where in short order he won the Best Designer award at the annual Parsons/FIT design competition and landed a job at Cynthia Rowley. Two years later, Gurung got a call from the higher-ups at Bill Blass. "I thought, Bill Blass?" he says. "But then I went to visit the atelier and realized it was on the level of the best European houses; it was a place where I could experience the best the world had to offer."
Does anyone know who the mom is? Just curious since he said ties to nepal's royal family.