Vera Wang missed the Olympics as a skater, then dressed its champions
As a teenager Vera Wang chased a place on the American Olympic figure skating team and was crushed when she fell short. She became Vogue's youngest editor instead, opened a bridal salon at 40, and decades later was inducted into the skating hall of fame for costumes worn by Olympians.
A New Yorker from birth on June 27, 1949, Wang was the daughter of Chinese parents who had arrived in the mid-1940s. Her mother, Florence Wu, translated for the United Nations and was the daughter of the warlord Wu Junsheng; her father, Cheng Ching Wang, studied at Yanjing University and MIT and ran a medicine company among other businesses. She took up skating at eight and, skating pairs with James Stuart during high school, reached the 1968 national championships, earning a spot in Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd.
After studying art history at Sarah Lawrence College, with time at the University of Paris, she joined Vogue straight from graduation and stayed 17 years. In 1987 she moved to Ralph Lauren for two years, then quit to design wedding dresses on her own. Her first salon opened in 1990 in New York's Carlyle Hotel, and bridal boutiques in London, Tokyo and Sydney followed.
The gowns made her famous; brides have included Chelsea Clinton and Mariah Carey, and Michelle Obama has worn her evening wear. The skating link never broke. Nancy Kerrigan wore her designs at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Games, Michelle Kwan in 1998 and 2002, and Nathan Chen in 2018 and 2022, and in 2009 the sport's national hall of fame inducted her as a costume designer. She still skates, calling it multidimensional.
Business moves pushed the name well beyond couture. A cheaper line called Simply Vera went to Kohl's, a White collection sold at David's Bridal from 2011 for $600 to $1,400, and home goods began in 2002 with china and crystal. Forbes ranked her 34th among America's richest self-made women in 2018, with revenues reaching $630 million. In December 2024 the brand's intellectual property went to WHP Global, with Wang staying on as founder and chief creative officer.
Source: Vera Wang
