Vera Wang: Daily Routine

She built a fashion empire on leggings, takeout lunches, and 7 daily meetings—and still finds time for a bath to breathe between day and night.

When fashion designer Vera Wang, who runs a luxury brand empire and frequently puts in 7-day workweeks, was asked by Harvard Business Review about her work ethic, she credited her Chinese heritage, “My parents were immigrants, and they never allowed me to be spoiled. You worked. You worked. You worked. That’s an immigrant mentality.”

Wang has been in the fashion business over 50 years, starting out as an editor at Vogue (where she spent 17 years), before joining Ralph Lauren as a design director, and then finally launching her own company in 1990.

But before all that, she was a figure skater. “It’s a wonderful sport for young women. It teaches you discipline. It gives you the joy of self-expression,” Wang said about figure skating. “There’s speed; there’s movement; and when you fall down, you pick yourself up and try again. It’s a good metaphor for life.” When she failed to make the U.S. Olympics team, she turned to fashion.