Biographies in brief: Diane von Furstenberg

The inside story of the woman who made the humble wrap dress a style icon

​Early life

Born in 1946 to a Romanian father and Greek-born, Jewish mother who had been released from Auschwitz just 18 months before her birth, Diane Simone Michelle Halfin, as she was then known, was brought up in Brussels, Belgium and attended boarding school in Oxfordshire, England. Aged 18 she moved to Spain to study at Madrid University before transferring to the University of Geneva in Switzerland to study economics.

Here she met her first husband, Prince Egon zu Fürstenberg, the eldest son of Prince Tassilo zu Fürstenberg and Fiat heiress Clara Agnelli. The pair married in 1969 and moved to New York where they had two children - Prince Alexander von Fürstenberg and Princess Tatiana von Fürstenberg. During this time von Furstenberg worked as an assistant to Albert Koski in Paris as well as an apprentice to textile manufacturer Angelo Ferretti.

​Stepping into fashion design

dDespite being financially comfortable thanks to her marriage, in 1970, aged 24, Diane von Furstenberg (who had by then chosen to drop the umlaut and adopt the more widely used ‘von’ in her name) began designing clothes at the encouragement of influential Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. Speaking to the New York Times in 1977, she explained her career choice was motivated by a desire to be more than just a wife, “The minute I knew I was about to be Egon's wife, I decided to have a career. I wanted to be someone of my own, and not just a plain little girl who got married beyond her desserts.”

But as her career began to take off, her marriage crumbled and the pair separated on good terms in 1972, with DvF deciding to keep her married name. Incidentally, it was also this year that saw the wrap dress make its debut thanks, in part, to the styling of Julie Nixon Eisenhower, who wore a DvF wrap top and skirt combo on television inspiring the designer to turn the style into a single piece.

In the wrap dress DvF had hit on a design that was universally flattering, comfortable and easy to wear. Accordingly, the style immediately took off and, by 1975, DvF was making 15,000 wrap dresses a week, with the style even coming to be seen as a symbol of women’s liberation.

"I had a very down-to-earth product, my wrap dress, which was really a uniform. It was just a simple little cotton-jersey dress that everybody loved and everybody wore," DvF told New York magazine in 1988. "I would see 20, 30 dresses walking down one block. All sorts of different women. It felt very good. Young and old, and fat and thin, and poor and rich.”

Credit: Ed Kavishe/Fashion Wire Press

​Achieving global fame

In 1976, Diane von Furstenberg appeared on the cover of Newsweek to mark the sale of her five millionth wrap dress. Upheld as a symbol of progression and female business success, it was around this time that she also became a fixture of the glamorous 1970s New York social scene, with the article declaring her “the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel”. Frequently seen at Studio 54, she counted Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger as friends while her high profile boyfriends included Warren Beatty and Richard Gere. Not that any of this interfered with business success – by 1979 her company was reporting annual sales in excess of $150 million.

Liu Wen wearing an SS14 wrap dress. Credit: Christopher Macsurak.

​A change of scene

Having sold her dress design license to the Puritan Fashion Corporation at the end of the 1970s and the accompanying cosmetics brand to Beecham Pharmaceuticals in 1983, the early ‘80s saw DvF untethered from her label and seeking a new start. In 1985 von Furstenberg left New York for Paris where she founded the French-language publishing house Salvy. Over the next few years she also launched a cosmetics company and a fashion line called Silk Assets for home shopping channel QVC before relaunching the Diane von Furstenberg label in 1997, bringing her wrap dress to a new generation of women. A year later she published her first memoir, Diane: A Signature Life.

​Settling down and philanthropy

In 2001 DvF remarried, this time to media high flyer Barry Diller. The pair had met and had a relationship more than three decades earlier and, having rekindled their romance much later in life, were married in what Dvf told The Independent was her birthday present to him when he turned 59. A few years earlier, in 1999, the pair had set up the Diller-Von Furstenberg Family Foundation - a philanthropic organisation which supports non-profits within the human rights, arts, health, environment, education and community building sectors.

In recognition of her work, Diane von Furstenberg was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2005 and, a year later, was made the body’s president. On announcement of her appointment, von Furstenberg said it was her wish to create a brand around the CFDA and bring attention to the huge economic and business opportunities that the fashion industry represented.

In line with this goal, in 2010 Diane von Furstenberg launched the still ongoing DVF Awards to recognise women who have aided the lives of other women around the world through their leadership, courage and commitment. With support from the Diller-Von Furstenberg Family Foundation, each winner across a number of categories is given $50,000 to support and continue their work, with past recipients including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria Steinem, Iman, Sonia Sotomayor and Jane Goodall. Later in 2012, DvF also announced she would be giving away half of her fortune through the Giving Pledge, a scheme founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage America’s wealthiest inhabitants to donate money to help solve big societal problems.

​A fight with the First Lady

As someone who has largely stayed out of the controversial limelight for most of her life, it came as a surprise to many when DvF found herself in a very public dispute with First Lady Michelle Obama in 2011. When Obama chose not to wear an American designer to a state dinner with Chinese president Hu Jintao, instead opting for a gown by Alexander McQueen, DvF released a statement in her capacity of chair of the CFDA saying, "Our First Lady, Michelle Obama, has been wonderful at promoting our designers, so we were surprised and a little disappointed not to be represented for this major state dinner.”

Perhaps having spoken in haste, or realising later her faux pas in criticising the universally beloved Obama - who had, admittedly, been instrumental in raising the profile of US designers including Cristian Siriano, Jason Wu and Thom Browne - von Furstenberg told the Daily Beast a month later, “I was so embarrassed that I am definitely going to write to her.”

​Awards season

Despite the feud, 2011 proved to be something of a stellar year for Diane von Furstenberg. In February she was honoured with the Award of Courage – previously won by figures including Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Taylor – for her work combatting AIDS while in April she picked up the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal from the Municipal Art Society of New York. This award was given in recognition of her work towards major redevelopment projects in New York City, most notably in the Meatpacking District and the city’s High Line Park, which, along with her husband, DvF has donated $10 million to.

Naomi Campbell walks the DvF SS14 runway. Credit: Christopher Macsurak.

A few years later, in 2015, von Furstenberg was named as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People following the 2014 release of her memoir The Woman I Wanted To Be, while in 2019 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In January 2020, DvF was succeeded as Chairman of the CFDA by Tom Ford, shortly before receiving the French Legion d’Honneur for her services to fashion, philanthropy and women’s leadership. She continues to helm her eponymous brand while overseeing the DVF Awards and the philanthropic activities of the Diller-Von Furstenberg Family Foundation.

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