- author, Katie Lazar
- role, Culture and Media Editor
What would you wear to an interview with Diane von Furstenberg, the acclaimed fashion designer who invented a dress so famous people still talk about it 50 years later?
Von Furstenberg, 77, introduced her famous wrap dress in the US in 1974 and told me it was “magical and a huge hit.”
The magic seems to be a combination of fashion sense, drive and timing.
It was a time of liberation, when women strove to be taken seriously in the workplace.
The dress was glamorous yet office appropriate.
The stretchy jersey fabric and wrap design “fits the body nicely, making it look ‘formed’ yet sexy at the same time,” von Furstenberg said.
She had already designed a wrap top modeled after the dancer’s cardigan, along with a matching skirt and trousers.
But during the Watergate scandal, she was thrilled to see President Nixon’s daughter, Julia Nixon Eisenhower, on television defending her father over the political scandal.
“She matched the skirt with my laptop and I was like, ‘Oh look’ and I felt so proud.
And I thought, “Yeah, I’ll turn that into a dress.”
Since then, it has been worn by Madonna, Jerry Hall, the Princess of Wales and generations of ordinary working women.
Oprah Winfrey remembers saving up for this as a young reporter.
“I wanted to be a responsible woman.”
The designer is the focus of the upcoming Disney+/Hulu documentary, Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge, which reveals what drives her.
She told me that while she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, “I knew what kind of woman I wanted to be. I wanted to be a responsible woman.”
For her, it meant being free to live life the way she wanted.
This was a time when American women couldn’t even own a checkbook or a credit card without a male cosigner (and British women couldn’t open a bank account in their own name until 1975).
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called von Furstenberg “one of the first women to really break the glass ceiling in business.”
The designer became a talk-show fixture and was hailed by the Jewish immigrant princess (whose first marriage was to a German prince) as having “reinvented the dress”, in the words of the famous US host David Letterman.
The irony of her first husband being German was not lost on von Furstenberg.
Her mother, Lili Halfin, survived the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück concentration camps during World War II.
She was released weighing just 20 kilos and doctors told her fiancé that it was too dangerous for her to have the child.
But 18 months later, Diane was born.
“My mother would often say, ‘God saved me so that I could give you life. And in giving you life, you gave me life back. You are my beacon of freedom.'”
However, her mother’s parenting style was strict.
From a young age, Diane was taught not to be afraid of anything and not to be a victim.
It was as if Lily was preparing her daughter in case she ever had to experience the horrors that Diane had experienced.
“When I was afraid of the dark, my mother would lock me in a dark closet. Now she could get arrested for that.”
“But ultimately, she taught me that fear is not an option. Push through the fear and deal with whatever you have to deal with. And that’s the greatest lesson.”
The designer certainly seems fearless: She has a string of celebrity friends and lovers and lives life to the fullest.
In the documentary, she says that she was asked to have a threesome with Mick Jagger and David Bowie, but decided that it would make a better story if she refused.
She also came close to bankruptcy more than once, and after losing everything and starting over, she sold dresses on the newly launched QVC shopping channel in the US.
The high-fashion world may have sneered, but when it first appeared in 1993, the dress sold out in just two hours and generated $1.3 million in orders, sparking a re-entry into the business.
Von Furstenberg’s life is, as the documentary’s director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy told me, “a hymn to freedom.”
The Pakistani-born actress, who will direct the next (still secret) Star Wars movie, has already won two Academy Awards for her documentary on the struggles of women in Pakistan.
“Throughout my life, I have made films about women who faced extraordinary circumstances, defied adversity and became true pioneers,” said Obaid-Chinoy.
She calls the designer “a woman who really created something out of nothing at a time when women weren’t even being talked about.”
The director, who previously branched out into the superhero world by directing TV’s Ms. Marvel, also gave some hints about directing the new Star Wars movie.
It’s another story centered around a female hero.
The film’s focus is “very much Daisy Ridley” (who made her breakthrough in 2015 with her role as Rey in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens).
However, the film will also “feature many characters that have been brought back to the Star Wars universe or given new life.”
Despite scaling back operations since the pandemic, von Furstenberg is pleased that her designs are still being passed down to new generations.
She says the wrap dress is currently being rediscovered by young women.
“It’s never really happened before that a dress survives 50 years, so it’s even more revolutionary than it was the first time.”
In an industry obsessed with age, this designer doesn’t seem to be worried about getting older at all.
The documentary’s opening scene sees her climbing makeup-free over her bathroom sink and preening her face in the mirror, explaining that wrinkles paint “the map of your life.”
When we met in person, she laughed and said she looked awful in the photo.
But she doesn’t seem to mind anyway, and is adamant that age is something we should be proud of and embrace.
She told me that her attitude may have something to do with what her mother told her.
“My birth was a victory and a gift of life, so I must respect life every day.”
That’s the mantra she left me with as she left our interview. Of course, she was wearing her own dress: a black-on-white patterned dress, but it wasn’t her trademark wrap dress.
By the way, I chose a light-colored summer dress that I bought on a beach in Greece many years ago. We didn’t discuss our outfit choice, and that was probably for the best.