On November 22, 2021, the world's top cake designer Sylvia Winstock passed away at her home in New York at the age of 91. She had just retired a month ago, and her last guest was Jennifer Gates, Bill Gates' daughter.
As a leader in the luxury wedding cake industry, Silvia's cake is like Wang Weiwei's wedding dress, which makes celebrities from all walks of life flock to her. Known as the "Leonardo da Vinci of wedding cakes", her work is not only extremely artistic, but also top-notch, and many people are proud to have the opportunity to see and taste the cakes of the Sylvia Weinstock brand.
Before the age of 50, Sylvia was an elementary school teacher in Long Island, New York, dedicated the first half of her life to education, and in her spare time, she liked to cook and bake, make apple pie, bake cakes, and never imagined that one day she would take her hobby as a career and become the "queen of cakes".
Sylvia loves to teach and shares the wisdom of life she has accumulated over the course of nearly a century. A reporter once asked her, career, love, family, health, how to sort? Her answer is always health first, love life and family second, and business last.
Without health, there is nothing, and Sylvia proves it with her own experience.
Sylvia was born in 1930, and in the early 80s she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In order to get closer to the hospital, the family moved from Long Island to Manhattan. Sylvia didn't know how long she would live, and during the days of her treatment, she used baking to decompress.
At that time, the wedding was far more simple than it is now, there were very few people engaged in wedding cake design, and seeing the market potential, she gradually realized that her talent could be transformed into a successful career.
After recovering, she regained her life and was ready to start a different life.
Sylvia's husband, Benjamin, a lawyer, sold his law firm to start a business with his wife. Their first store opened in 1980 and specializes in a bespoke cake business. Sylvia's philosophy is to make her cake a hub for events such as social gatherings that will last a lifetime.
As a perfectionist, Sylvia believes that wedding cakes must not only have a beautiful appearance, but also taste good. She insists on using high-quality natural ingredients, never taking shortcuts in the production process, not using materials that are easy to form but have a poor taste such as gummies, and not adding artificial flavors or chemicals to ensure optimal quality and taste.
Silvia refers to her and her team as "pastry chefs and artists" rather than "cake framers." In her view, the "cake decorator" only plans and designs in the abstract, does not bake herself, does not use high-quality raw materials, and attracts consumers at a low cost and a low price. The "pastry chef and artist" is a person who can combine art and delicious food.
The same cake flowers, the framer and the artist made a very different thing. Sylvia's signature skill is her original cake flowers, each of which is an accurate reproduction of the real thing from shape, size to color, vivid and real.
In an interview, she explained how to make a cream rose: take a fresh rose apart one by one, arrange the petals in a row, copy each petal with a special cream sugar dough, and assemble the petals in the order of the flowers. Using the same technique, she and her team create tulips, lilies, lilies, or any flower a client dreams.
The closer you get to the center of the flower, the smaller the petals and the more complex the process. Making such cake flowers requires not only exquisite craftsmanship, but also time-consuming, and a cake artist makes only 100 roses in a week (40 hours).
In order to achieve the best design effect, Sylvia did not hesitate to cost, "We never count how many flowers are on the cake... Just keep adding until you're satisfied. It could be hundreds or thousands. ”
Sylvia's headquarters is a five-storey building, with a welcome area on the first floor and a baking area on the second and third floors, where the finished product is sent to the basement for refrigeration. She set up her home on the fourth and fifth floors, and everything in the store was under control.
She is very busy every day, feeling like she works eight days a week, but she enjoys it. When her husband took her children to skiing, she tested her recipes with a French chef in the shop.
In Sylvia's formative years, most women worked as teachers, nurses, secretaries, or married as full-time housewives. Because of her love of teaching, Sylvia continued her studies after graduating with a bachelor's degree in education, earning a master's degree in psychology.
At the age of 17, she met Benjamin. "A group of cousins and friends went to the beach and all the girls had their hair done and put on makeup. I wanted to swim in the sea, but we stipulated that someone had to accompany me. A young man said he was going with me, and that person was Ben. ”
"I don't think it was love at first sight with him. He's cute, smart, and I like him. Love will come with time. ”
"Over time, we had more feelings and chemistry and decided to get married. I'm 19 and he's 24, we get married on Friday and return to school on Monday. ”
The couple's wedding took place in the auditorium of a seminary, with only a few relatives present, and the guests blessed the couple with a glass of wine and a simple honey cake. Her angry parents didn't show up, believing she was still too young and that getting married would affect her studies.
Sylvia proved to her parents that her choice was correct, and she and Benjamin helped each other and lived happily together for nearly 70 years, raising three daughters together.
"I married someone I liked, someone who supported my decisions, someone who supported me growing up and being myself. He encouraged me to do what I liked to do, rather than being an accessory. We respect each other, have a great relationship, set a good example for our children, and our daughters and partners have been married for more than 25 years. ”
Sylvia and daughter Janet
Sylvia has a unique perspective on love, and she doesn't think love at first sight is love.
"Love is something that needs to be brewed slowly. I think people confuse chemistry, love, and emotion with what they think is love, but it's not. You fall in love with someone because you like him, you like each other first, and the feeling of love is much deeper than liking. You feel that a person is physically attractive, that is not love. ”
Silvia's extensive life experience and expertise make her extremely trusted by couples, who actively seek her advice and suggestions throughout the wedding planning process and even after.
In 2016, in order to have more time to spend with her husband, Silvia announced that she would no longer work full-time in baking, but would only do training and pass on her skills to the younger generation.
Two years later, Benjamin died at the age of 93.
For Sylvia, business is the least important thing in her life, and it's something she's very good at.
Andy Warhol said, "Making money is an art, working is an art, and good business is the best art." ”
Sylvia knows this well and knows how to combine business and art perfectly, and her experience has three points:
First, be able to package and market yourself.
Sylvia's appearance is always elegant and capable, "In the design industry, you have to look tasteful. There are some wedding coordinators who are sloppy in appearance and would never hire them as coordinators if I were clients or accept their suggestions. It seemed to me that they were a mess, their hair was unattended, their nail polish was peeling off, and I couldn't imagine a sloppy-looking guy doing his job neatly and orderly. ”
In addition, it must also have its own characteristics and be recognizable. The exaggerated large round glasses are Sylvia's logo, "Because of the glasses, people can recognize me at a glance." ”
Regarding the origin of glasses, Sylvia said this:
I was walking down a street in Palm Beach and saw a pair of big glasses in the shop window, and I thought, "This is truly unique."
After looking at the price, my husband said, "It's too expensive, you can find cheaper ones in New York." ”
I didn't have glasses in New York, so I bought them. When he got the bill, he said, "What, are you crazy?!" ”
I said, "These glasses can't be paired with diamond earrings, think about how much money you've saved." ”
Nowadays, the pattern of the glasses has been registered as a trademark and used as a signature on the cake. Glasses are expensive, I can't afford two pairs, really.
Secondly, customer first, respect for customer opinions and aesthetics.
Sylvia receives only 15 orders for custom cakes per week, and customers can participate in the design of cakes from taste to filling. "The grooms are very engaged, they are very interested in the taste of the cake and actively participate in tasting... Brides are more concerned with design. ”
"A lot of suppliers feel special, they have a special job, and they need to remember that their job is to keep their customers happy. A wedding coordinator who thinks he has taste said to me, I'll never let my bride wear this (wedding dress). I said, wait a minute, you can give her this advice, but if I'm the bride who hired you, I'd like to know why, or just fire you. It's not your (coordinator's) wedding, it's the girl's wedding, and you can help raise the bar, but it's her wedding. ”
"I like to do business honestly and legally and don't like to give commissions. I get paid as much as my product is worth, and if someone wants to make money from it, they'd better inform the customer. There is a very bad phenomenon in business activities, some coordinators say, I give you this cake business, you give me 10% rebate. I'll tell them, no, I'm not going to pay you 10%, and I don't understand what you're talking about. ”
For customers, whether celebrities or ordinary people who have used their savings over the years to buy a special cake, she treats them equally, gives the same respect, and provides the best service.
Third, quality determines value, and the best products are made with the spirit of craftsmanship.
Cakes produced by Sylvia range in price range, depending on size, shape and complexity, between $500-70,000 and $15-20 per person (about 100-130 yuan). Usually, a wedding cake for 200 people is priced at $3,000.
In 2000, Sylvia designed a 1.8-meter-high six-tier cake for the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones for $7,000. In 2015, when TV star Sophia Vergara got married, she asked Sylvia to make a cake for $50,000.
A cake worth $50,000
Sylvia's favorite quote from John Ruskin (English writer and artist): "There is nothing in the world that cannot be made worse and sold cheaper, and those who think only of price become the object of deception." ”
In layman's terms, it is a penny for a penny, cheap is not a good product, and a good product is not cheap.
"Your work is an extension of you, and if you don't do it well, it's not worth doing."
"My cake is for the connoisseur, it's a luxury, but it's an affordable luxury. Relatively speaking, our cake is the cheapest expense in a (luxurious) wedding, cheaper than a dress, and certainly cheaper than a wedding ring. ”
"Whether it's a business event, a baptism, a birthday, a wedding or any other celebration, I think cake is always the focal point of events, it's the last thing people eat and has to be memorable."
"Most people don't remember the food, the music or the flowers at the party, but 30 years later they still remember the cake. It gave me a lot of joy. ”
While people are welcome to spend money to order cakes, Sylvia doesn't approve of going bankrupt or going into debt to have a grand wedding, "they can buy a house with the money they spend on five hours." Weddings are meant to share the joy of the family, not to let people see how much they have spent. Do what you can afford in the most tasteful way possible, even if that means having to grill in the backyard. ”
In addition to large wedding cakes, the Sylvia Winstock brand also makes small celebration cakes that are just as beautiful. For ordinary people, biting their teeth is still affordable.
Graduation cake
Sylvia changed the way wedding cakes are designed, turning cakes into works of art, and pursuing the ultimate beauty with the spirit of craftsmanship, which has had a profound impact on the industry.
She had two careers in her life, both of which were very successful. Her approach to measuring success is inspiring:
"I create the happiest moments for my clients. My way of measuring success is how much happiness I bring to others and how much satisfaction I bring to myself. ”
She said that nothing is important to health, after all, only by having health can you have the energy to pursue and enjoy other things you want. However, even if you have health, you must distinguish the priorities of life and do not spend your energy on unimportant things.
"In today's world, everything is relative. You should take every day as a blessing and enjoy all that you have. Don't crave things that aren't important and let what you don't have ruin you. ”
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