Over the years, fashion designer, Vera Wang, has inspired generations with her iconic looks for both wedding and the catwalk. Wang celebrates 70 years on the planet with a photoshoot for the ages, sporting a social-distancing-approved look, among others. With seven decades of experience, what is Wang’s net worth and where does she find inspiration?

A look at Vera Wang’s career

Vera Wang may have started out as a figure skater with Olympic dreams (she didn’t make the 1986 team), but she’s celebrating her 70th birthday as a fashion legend.

Wang is a New Yorker at heart and stems from immigrant parents. Her ambition and drive began at an early age. She began by working at Yves Saint Laurent boutique on New York’s Madison Avenue during the summer after her junior year of college.

“It was just fate that I met — well, waited on — Frances Patiky Stein, who was one of the two fashion directors of [American] Vogue at the time. She said, ‘Call me when you’re finished with college.’ For some reason, I believed her, and for some reason I did it. I called her two years later and she totally remembered me and got me an interview!” Wang previously told BoF.

The fashion designer started as an assistant and worked her way up the Vogue ladder to “one of the magazine’s youngest ever fashion editors.” She spent 15 years perfecting her craft at the magazine.

“It gives you an education that is parallel to none. There is nothing that isn’t available to you if you believe in it and want it and defend it to your boss,” she said. “You had the best hairstylists, the best makeup artists, the best new photographers, the best-established photographers.”

Wang left in 1987 to join Ralph Lauren where she served as a design director and two years after that, fate intervened once again as she planned her wedding to Arthur Becker and had a realization.

“There wasn’t anything, either a retail situation or a couture [designer] that really satisfied the needs of modern women, in my opinion,” she said.

“I was using common sense and thinking, ‘Well, everybody doesn’t want to wear the 4-inch cap-sleeve where you can’t lift your arms and a bodice of sequined lace with a big pouf skirt and stuff around your hair dangling down. I just thought there was another vision.”

The bridal boutiques changed everything

By 1990, she opened her own bridal boutique, Bridal House Ltd., on Madison Avenue.

“Because I didn’t come from a bridal background, I think I brought fashion to [the bridal industry],” she said. “I was fearless because I really didn’t know any better.”

Her “ready-to-wear” line launched in 2000 while Wang partnered with David’s Bridal and Men’s Warehouse. Then came licensing agreements, and eventually, deals with the likes of Zales and other ventures. All of which have made the name Wang synonymous with the wedding and bridal industry.

“People have done far better than me in far shorter periods of time, but that wasn’t my story,” she said. “It was brick by brick, client by client, store by store. It’s been a trip of passion, but it has not been a quick trip. Nor has it been easy. And that is the truth.”

Wang celebrated her 70th birthday with a photoshoot — here’s what inspires her

When you turn 70, you host your own fashion photoshoot in your quarantine quarters like Wang. The famed designer, who has self-quarantined in Miami, Florida, posted a slew of photos on her Instagram page showing off her timeless beauty in various looks.

By the looks of it, you’d think Wang had an infinite source of inspiration to keep her creative and motivated — especially during a pandemic. As it turns out, she has a couple places she looks to.

One of which, according to Wang, is having watched her entrepreneurial father who became successful in the pharmaceutical industry.

“I think, in a way, watching him grow his company influenced me subliminally,” she said, also referring to the one who introduced her to fashion — her mother.

“My mother and I went to a couture show when [Yves Saint Laurent] was on Rue Spontini,” she said. “That was his first couture house. It was a little atelier — 33 Rue Spontini, I still remember the address. So I really have been educated in fashion. I grew up with it, exposed to the greatest.”

These days, Wang also seeks guidance from her “workday fashion family.”

“e could speak about life, love, work, priorities, family, even fears made each day a new experience. Forcing ourselves to celebrate each life event from birthdays, anniversaries, holidays such as Easter, even births, and sadly, illnesses, helped me to see the need to treasure these milestones no matter what,” she told Harper’s Bazaar.

Regardless of what she’s doing, 70 might be Wang’s best year yet.

What is Wang’s net worth?

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Wang is worth an estimated $650 million. She earns her money through wedding gown sales — specifically, the intricate, embellished gowns often worn by celebrities — as well as figure skating gowns the designer has created.

Wang wrote a book in 2001 that details her work in the wedding venue. She owns bridal boutiques in New York, London, Tokyo, and Sydney, and in 2007, Kohl’s picked up her collection, Simply Vera, with David’s Bridal doing the same in 2011.

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