Fashion Designers: Diane von Furstenberg
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Diane von Furstenberg, who guided the career women of the 1970s into a style that spoke both power and elegance, and is the current president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Early Life and Career
Diane Simone Michelle Halfin was born in Belgium and went on to study economics at the University of Geneva, where she met her first husband, Austro-Italian Prince Egon of Furstenberg. They moved to New York and later divorced, but she kept the von Furstenberg name. At the urging of her ex-husband, she founded her fashion line in 1972. Her motto, “Feel like a woman. Wear a dress” would become a style inspiration to the career women of the disco era.
Source: StyleBites
The Wrap Dress
In 1973, Diane von Furstenberg would release the dress that would ensure her place in fashion merchandising textbooks. Inspired by the Japanese kimono, the von Furstenberg wrap dress was an interpretation of that easy-to-wear look, updated by free-flowing knits that went from workplace into the evening. At the age of 29 (and some five million dresses later), she was Newsweek’s November 1976 cover story. According to New York Magazine, von Furstenberg was “touted as the most marketable designer since Coco Chanel.” But when, inevitably, women decided that they didn’t need any more wrap dresses, her fashion house hovered near bankruptcy. In an interview with fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, Von Furstenberg said, “It all happened so fast, and I was so young. Everybody wanted a piece of me, and I didn't know who to say yes to and who to say no to.”
A Fashion Comeback
In 1992, after some years of recuperation in Europe, von Furstenberg launched Silk Assets, a lower-priced fashion line on home shopping channel QVC. According to The New York Times, the initial stock sold out in two hours, making $1.2 million.
Source: The New York Times
A few years later, her daughter-in-law Alexandra noted that von Furstenberg’s iconic wrap dresses were being snatched up at New York’s vintage shops. The 1970s style of “tight on top, loose on the bottom” had made a comeback. The easygoing approach to fashion in the late 1990s made an ideal time for von Furstenberg to break back onto the fashion scene and in 1997, she re-launched her line.
Source: New York Magazine
Ten years later, the former princess is back at the top of the game. Diane von Furstenberg is the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and the likes of Kate Hudson and Gwen Stefani wear her couture designs. She has 22 freestanding boutiques around the world, including her flagship boutique in New York’s ultrafashionable meatpacking district.
Source: Diane von Furstenberg’s official Web site
Diane von Furstenberg is again a New York Fashion Week mainstay. See all of von Furstenberg’s shows since Fall 2000 on Style.com, the Web site of Vogue magazine.
Source: Style.com
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