by Andrew Seguin

Like many who have succeeded in creative pursuits, Vera Wang’s path to becoming a well-known fashion designer wasn’t direct. It has been full of missteps and slippery surfaces, much like the path of a figure skater, which she once was.

Ms. Wang, a member of the Chapin Class of 1967, who spoke to students at Upper School News last Wednesday, explained how her interest in fashion began partly on the ice and partly at home. “I saw that a skater’s costume was integral to expressing an artistic vision,” Ms. Wang said. “And I was seduced by my mother’s clothing collection,” she added. “Fashion seemed to be a world of invention, transformation and beauty.”

Though enthralled with that world, Ms. Wang first pursued a career in figure skating. “I gambled and I lost,” Ms. Wang said of not qualifying for the 1968 Olympics, for which she tried out after dropping out of Chapin. She ended up at Sarah Lawrence College and then went to live in Paris for a year; there, her love for fashion was cemented. Ms. Wang returned to New York determined to work in the industry. After a stint as a salesperson at the Yves Saint Laurent store on Madison Avenue, she became, at the age of 23, the youngest editor at Vogue magazine.

Ms. Wang worked at Vogue for 16 years before realizing that she was not going to become its editor-in-chief. “I took a long, hard look at my life at that point,” she said. She left to work as a design director for Ralph Lauren, where she stayed until the age of 40, when she got engaged and had the experience that would change her career. “I was in Saks Fifth Avenue looking at wedding dresses, and all of them were unsatisfactory to me,” she said. “They weren’t right for my age,” she added. Ms. Wang saw that designing bridal gowns was an untapped niche, and she started her own company to focus on bridal design in 1990. Her eponymous company has expanded and now designs numerous products, including evening gowns, ready-to-wear clothing and home furnishings.

For the Upper School students, whose questions ranged from how to get started in fashion to how accurately the recent film The Devil Wears Prada portrayed Vogue magazine, Ms. Wang’s story was a lesson in perseverance and an acknowledgement of life’s unexpected twists of fate. “Everything good that happened to me happened because something else didn’t work out,” she told them. For Ms. Wang, the missteps in her life were just part of finding her stride.