Vera Wang: Missed the Olympic team, then designed her first dress at 40
A competitive figure skater who did not make the Olympic team, she spent 17 years at a fashion magazine before opening her own bridal shop at 40.
The first plan
Vera Wang was born in New York in 1949 and trained seriously as a figure skater as a teenager. She did not make the United States team for the 1968 Winter Olympics, and the plan she had built her youth around came to an end.
Seventeen years at a magazine
She joined Vogue as an assistant and became one of its senior fashion editors, staying 17 years. In 1987 she left to work as a design director at Ralph Lauren, and spent two years learning how clothes are made and sold, not just how they are photographed.
The turn
Planning her own wedding in 1989, she could not find a dress she wanted and had one made. In 1990, aged 40, she opened a bridal shop in the Carlyle Hotel in New York with backing from her father.
What came of it
Her bridal gowns became her best known work, and the business grew into ready to wear and other lines. She has spoken often about starting her own label at an age when many people think the door has closed.
Each job she did fed the next: skating taught discipline, the magazine taught taste, the design job taught production. A career can be a series of apprenticeships.
Where the facts come from: Biography, Encyclopaedia Britannica; Interview, Harvard Business Review, 'Life's Work: An Interview with Vera Wang' (2019).
