Fashionably great
NEW YORK — Diane von Furstenberg spent three decades making the case that women can be sexy, strong and successful.
Life as an “It girl,” mother and fashion force made her the living proof. The material evidence? A 1976 issue of Newsweek, which featured the then-29-year-old designer on the cover after she sold 5 million wrap dresses in her first four years in business.
Earlier this month, the Council of Fashion Designers of America handed von Furstenberg a lifetime achievement award. She wore a long, black wrap gown with a lace camisole peeking out to accept the trophy at a black-tie gala.
The award was for more than the wrap dress and her commercial success, according to CFDA Executive Director Peter Arnold. “Here is somebody who truly has had a lifetime contribution in the world in fashion. She’s central to our industry, she was a huge starter out of the gate, went through tough times and is back in a big way. She’s a sign of longevity and true talent, and she’s a fashion icon at the same time, a mover and shaker, and always willing to nurture new talent,” he says.
Von Furstenberg says she’s honored, of course, to be recognized by people she considers both competitors and colleagues, but the award isn’t the crowning jewel for her. She loves her work and plans to be at it for years to come. There’s a store to be opened in Los Angeles this year and another in Hong Kong, and one in Tokyo in 2006.
More importantly, there is a new generation of women out there for her to counsel.
“I want the message for everyone to be — for everyone to pass on — don’t be afraid of your strength. Enjoy your strength,” von Furstenberg says.
Her most successful styles have been the ones that embrace the complexity of modern women who, like herself, want to be able to both move and shake; conversely, she says she’d never try to design menswear because she wouldn’t fully understand the customer.
Von Furstenberg doesn’t even give fashion advice to her husband of almost four years, media mogul Barry Diller, although “I make fun of him if I don’t like it,” she says with a laugh.
When von Furstenberg first emerged on the New York fashion scene in 1972 she was married to Prince Egon von Furstenberg, a European royal and an up-and-coming designer himself. But it was Diane who became the household name because she tapped into a need among women of that era who wanted to flaunt their feminine side along with their newfound independence.
There had been socialite designers before — Lucille who was also Lady Duff Gordon and Elsa Schiaparelli — but von Furstenberg blended “Warholian celebrity, exotic beauty and business savvy,” says Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“At a time when a number of others were working in jersey, von Furstenberg merged a kind of Old World, haute bourgeois propriety, with a distinctly un-American sense of the female form. Her dresses were definitely not Puritanical, nor were they explicitly sexualized,” Koda describes.
Von Furstenberg walked away from her business, though, in the 1980s after it got too big with licenses and ancillary products. She also was divorced.
She spent the next few years shuttling between Paris, where she founded a publishing house, and her rural Connecticut estate where she was raising her son and daughter. It’s the place she still calls “home,” since it’s where her family gathers for holidays, it’s where she keeps her most prized possession — her books — and it’s where she gardens.
Family is very important to von Furstenberg and her office is filled with snapshots, many taken with the little Contax camera that she always has in her bag. (She has tried several digital cameras but always goes back to film.)
Her late mother Lily was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps and “fear” and “impossible” were two words the woman didn’t know, recalls von Furstenberg. “A lot of my character comes from her.”
In the 1990s, von Furstenberg got the itch to get back into fashion. She also thought the marketplace needed the same spirit, the same message and, quite frankly, the same dress silhouette that was her trademark.
“I saw young girls of my daughter’s generation buying my dresses in vintage shops. The dresses were young and hip … so I started again with the essences that I had started with,” she says.
“Even though I’m a grandmother now, Diane von Furstenberg is a young brand. It’s for the woman I wanted to be, that I became and that I still am.”
Her clothes are purposely positioned to be in luxury stores but at a more affordable price point than many of the other designer labels. She says she likes to peek into her boutiques — the one in Manhattan is at the ground level of her studio — to see who is shopping there. However, she does not enjoy shopping for herself. Her wardrobe is almost entirely Diane von Furstenberg dresses, save some coats, sweaters and Juicy Couture pajama-style pants.
From her upcoming fall collection, dubbed “Winter Palace” and inspired by heroines of Russian literature, von Furstenberg’s favorite pieces are the jacquard knit suits, prints inspired by the handicrafts of Uzbekistan and the “revolutionary wrap,” an updated version of the dress with short sleeves, pockets and epaulets.
Would there ever be a von Furstenberg collection without a wrap dress?
“No, I don’t think so.”
She adds: “I didn’t think the dress would be a social phenomenon, but it didn’t happen just once, it happened twice. I think it offers a freedom, an easiness and a way of showing your body in a flattering way that women just respond to.”