The wrap artist
DIANE VON FURSTENBERG has a second career even more successful than her first. She’s a grandmother three times over. And at 58, she still looks fabulous in the wrap dress that put her on the fashion map in 1976, when Newsweek called her the most marketable woman in fashion since Coco Chanel.
So it’s no wonder that the designer says she is getting better with age.
A new boutique in the Melrose Heights shopping district, her first on the West Coast, is the latest showcase for her ever-expanding empire of clothing, accessories and fine jewelry. With leopard print rugs, a twinkling Art Deco chandelier and a replica of her famous Andy Warhol portrait on the wall, the place is every inch “DVF,” as she is known to her employees.
And yes, Von Furstenberg does spend time here -- she calls Los Angeles her second home. She shares a Coldwater Canyon house with her husband, Hollywood mogul Barry Diller (the two were introduced 30 years ago by power agent Sue Mengers and married in 2001), and her children from her first marriage live here. (Tatiana is a screenwriter and Alexandre works in finance.)
But for much of the year, the designer with the velvety voice, warm gaze and forever legs lives in New York’s West Village above her design studio.
Walk up the staircase at that studio and you’ll see photographs that inspired Von Furstenberg’s 1970s prints. And she still takes a camera everywhere she goes, snapping pictures of bark, twigs, leaves -- anything that might translate into the wrinkle-proof jersey that is used in the dress, the famous wrap creation that continues to reflect Von Furstenberg’s lifestyle. Indeed, she remains that charter member of the jet set who would just pick up and go to Bali.
“I really didn’t realize it would have the resonance it did,” she says of the iconic dress. “But it’s become like a pair of jeans or a miniskirt. It’s a social phenomenon.”
Since she relaunched her label seven years ago, she has expanded it to include skirts, tops and swimwear. Although she sells to high-end department stores and boutiques such as Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus, the average price of a dress is about $385, far less than most designer labels.
To celebrate the recent opening of her L.A. store, she hosted a ladies’ lunch with Taryn Manning, Regina King, Teri Polo and other young celebrities. “I don’t remember who they are, but they were very nice,” she says.
The eponymous shop offers an expanded selection of evening dresses for the red carpet, a term Von Furstenberg loathes. Unlike many designers, she does not give away clothes. “That’s not the kind of thing I do. But they do buy my things. Julia Roberts took a bunch of girls to Las Vegas for her birthday and bought them all DVF clothes. And Madonna and Renee Zellweger have worn my things on press junkets.”
During the last year, the designer has been on a roll, propelled in no small part by fashion’s current appetite for dresses. She has opened three new shops -- in L.A., Paris’ Left Bank and Hong Kong. She relaunched her beauty line with updated colors and packaging, along with a new e-commerce site, DVF.com. Fans can keep up with her travels through a diary, read interviews with inspiring women such as CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour and view a monthly yoga pose.
In addition, Von Furstenberg has designed rugs for the Rug Company and a collection of fine jewelry for H. Stern -- smoky quartz cocktail rings that sell for $2,200 and chunky gold chain-link bracelets that start at $7,200. Handbags in python and other exotic skins will be next.
“I was in the shower the other day, and I was trying to rationalize how I could be making accessories that are more expensive than my clothes,” she says. “It doesn’t make any sense. But I wear my clothes, and I also wear Christian Louboutin shoes. I decided that clothes are more disposable than accessories, which are timeless.”
Fairy tale phase
There is little about Von Furstenberg’s background that says “fashion entrepreneur.” She was born Diane Halfin in Brussels in 1946 to wealthy parents and attended boarding schools in Switzerland and England. While studying economics in Geneva, she met Prince Egon Von Furstenberg, a descendant of the German aristocratic family and the Italian Agnellis, owners of the Fiat car empire. “Most fairy tales end with the girl marrying the prince,” she says. “That’s where mine began.”
At the time, she was working as an apprentice at an Italian friend’s textile factory, getting exposure to the knitting and printing techniques that would establish her place in fashion. After learning she was pregnant, she married Egon, moved to New York and settled into a party scene that included Calvin Klein, Bianca Jagger and Warhol.
As it is now, fashion was an acceptable career choice for a socialite. But Von Furstenberg insists that having a job was a way of asserting her independence, something her mother, a survivor of Auschwitz, taught her to hold dear. Von Furstenberg took samples of her jersey separates to several magazine editors, but it was Vogue’s Diana Vreeland who gave her the confidence to go into business.
She came up with the idea for the wrap dress after seeing Julie Nixon Eisenhower on TV in 1972 wearing one of her wrap tops and skirts together. Von Furstenberg thought, “Why not combine the two pieces into one?” The first version was produced in 1973 in a wood-grain print. Five years later, more than 5 million wrap dresses had been sold.
All the while, Von Furstenberg understood the importance of marketing herself, the European princess. She traveled to stores around the country to demonstrate her charm -- and how to wear her clothes.
As her professional life soared, her private life crashed. Egon admitted to having numerous affairs, and the two separated the same year the wrap dress came out, after just four years of marriage. “At 27, I had two children, a business and was a party girl,” she remembers. “My mother lived with me. I had dinner with the kids, went to Studio 54 from midnight till 2 a.m. and worked the next day. Every part of it helped me not to indulge too much in any other part.”
Her empire expanded to include silk scarves, shirts, luggage, furs, sunglasses and a Sears furniture line. Cosmetics and perfume followed, and by the end of 1976, combined retail sales from her clothes and licenses totaled $60 million. She made the cover of Newsweek, dated actor Ryan O’Neal, and the store orders just kept growing.
But by 1978 she had licensed her name to so many products that the brand was fast being diluted. The market became oversaturated with her dresses, and Women’s Wear Daily pronounced the trend over. Von Furstenberg left 7th Avenue in 1979, narrowing her focus to beauty and cosmetics. She wanted to be the next Estee Lauder, but once again the company overextended itself.
In 1983 she sold the business and left for Paris and a relationship with Italian writer Alain Elkann.
During this more quiet phase, Von Furstenberg gave up her fishnets and stilettos for a schoolmarmish look in step with her novelist lover’s life. “Every time I changed boyfriends, I would change,” she says. “When my kids were teenagers, they thought I was a loser, that I had no personality.”
The relationship didn’t last. And when Elkann had an affair with a close friend, Von Furstenberg found herself asking why she would ever change for a man.
In 1990 she returned to New York to regain control of herself and her name. Long before Isaac Mizrahi, Karl Lagerfeld and others made it fashionable to go after the masses, Von Furstenberg tapped the market, selling Silk Assets, a collection of coordinated silk separates, on the QVC shopping channel.
In 1997 she noticed that stylish young women were wearing her wrap dresses from the 1970s, snapping them up at vintage shops. So she opened a design studio, producing new versions of the dress for department stores.
“What she designed is very easy,” says Janine Blain, West Coast representative for the Donegar Group, a retail and trend consulting firm with clients including Wal-Mart and Nordstrom. “The wrap dress is a classic. It’s easy on the body, it’s easy for many body types and it crosses many age groups. She’s created a loyal customer, but the product is so special, in the end it could survive without her name.”
Second time around
During an interview in Paris last month, Von Furstenberg appeared toned and mentioned a recent trip to the Ashram, a fitness retreat in the Santa Monica Mountains. “I had one great career, but this time around there is so much more satisfaction for me,” she said, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Left Bank apartment Diller bought her as a wedding gift. “I take it as such a compliment at this point in my life to be considered a young brand, and to be admired and desired by young, hip girls.
“I was at a dinner party with Jade Jagger, who is my goddaughter. And her daughter, Assisi, who is 13, was wearing one of my dresses. It’s a new generation!”
The apartment is a third-floor walk-up, a gem overlooking the Seine with a postcard view of the Eiffel Tower. The decor is, to say the least, eclectic. A geometric print blanket covers a coffee table; a souvenir from Uzbekistan -- the textile inspired a skirt in the fall collection, currently in stores -- that Von Furstenberg eagerly fetched from her wardrobe.
Clearly she still loves traveling. Lately she’s been spending a lot of time in Asia, looking for a place to open a store in Tokyo. But she still finds time to phone her children in Los Angeles every day. “They are my business partners and my worst critics. And one day, my grandchildren will take over.” (She already surrounds herself with young people. Both the creative director and the president of her New York-based company are in their early 30s.)
She recently received a lifetime achievement award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and hosted an event for the organization in L.A. She is considering a more formal role with the organization.
Her world is not picture-perfect. The designer made headlines in September when, during the spring runway show at her notoriously packed studio, a lighting rig fell on the audience, injuring several people. A magazine editor is suing for emotional distress.
“All I can say is I wish it had waited and fallen on me,” she says.
A new studio under construction in the Meatpacking District, not far from her old one, will have a grand staircase in the middle that will be covered with Swarovski crystals. Impressive, yes, but Von Furstenberg insists the accident made her realize that her fall 2006 show in February must be in the more professional tents in Bryant Park.
Although she published a memoir in 1998, she is contemplating a second. In “Diane: A Signature Life,” she detailed love affairs, recalled her family history, and the powerful experience of accompanying her mother in 1993 to the opening of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which she helped raise funds to build. (“My mother always told me that fear is not an option,” she says, when asked to relate her most important lesson.)
The book documents Von Furstenberg’s battle with oral cancer in 1994, her trips to the White House for state dinners, and to Cuba to meet Fidel Castro. Throughout, Diller is a constant. “We met in 1975, lived together for five years, and then I left. But we’ve always stayed in touch. He made other relationships difficult because there was this powerful presence in my life who loved me unconditionally.”
She says of the book: “I wanted to make a line between the past and the future. I was very scared starting my business again. I was afraid it wouldn’t work. But so much has happened in the past seven years. My mother died. Egon died. I have three grandchildren.”
“People talk so much about youth,” Von Furstenberg says. “But there are so many advantages to getting older. I want to write about that. You have so many more souvenirs, so many more friends, so much more knowledge. Everything is better except the physical.”
