Diane von Fürstenberg

Diane von Fürstenberg was born Diane Simone Michele Halfin on 31 December 1946 in Brussels, Belgium, to Jewish parents whose lives had been marked by war and survival. Her father, Leon Halfin, was born in Bessarabia and migrated to Belgium from Chişinău in 1929, later seeking refuge from the Nazis in Switzerland. Her mother, Liliane Nahmias, was born in Thessaloniki, joined the Resistance during World War II, was captured by the Nazis, and survived Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Liberated only 20 months before Diane’s birth, she weighed 49 pounds and was warned by doctors that having a child could kill her and that the baby might not be normal.

Von Fürstenberg has often credited her mother with shaping her sense of courage, especially the lesson that “fear is not an option.” She attended boarding school in Oxfordshire, studied at Complutense University of Madrid, and then transferred to the University of Geneva to study economics. Afterward she moved to Paris, where she worked as an assistant to fashion photographer’s agent Albert Koski. In Italy, as an apprentice at textile manufacturer Angelo Ferretti’s factory, she learned about cut, color, and fabric. There she designed her first silk jersey wrap tops and skirts as separates, then turned them into a one-piece dress after seeing a customer wear the pieces together.

In 1969, she married Prince Egon von Fürstenberg and rose to public attention as part of the German princely House of Fürstenberg. They separated in 1972 and divorced in 1983, but she continued to use his family name. A year after marrying, she began designing women’s clothes, determined, as she later said, “to be someone of my own.” After moving to New York, she met Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who called her designs “absolutely smashing” and helped place her name on the New York Fashion Week calendar. From there, her business began.

She is best known for the knitted jersey wrap dress, introduced in 1974 and soon associated with the women’s liberation era. Its advertising line in Women’s Wear Daily read, “Feel like a woman, wear a dress!” Sales rose quickly: soon 25,000 dresses were selling each week, and by 1976, according to Forbes, one million had been sold. The dress was seen as clothing for a “woman in charge” and is held in the Costume Institute collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1976, von Fürstenberg appeared on the cover of Newsweek, whose article called her “the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel.” She also launched cosmetics and her first fragrance, Tatiana, named after her daughter.

Her career changed course more than once. In 1985 she moved to Paris and founded Salvy, a French-language publishing house. She also entered cosmetics and home shopping, and in 1992 sold $1.2 million of her Silk Assets collection in two hours on QVC, a success she credited with giving her the confidence to relaunch her company. In 1997 she relaunched Diane von Furstenberg and reintroduced the wrap dress to a new generation. The company later grew to availability in more than 70 countries, with 45 free-standing shops worldwide, and headquarters and a flagship boutique in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

Von Fürstenberg served as chairwoman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 2006 to 2019. She received a star on Seventh Avenue’s Fashion Walk of Fame in 2008, was listed by Forbes in 2014 as the 68th most powerful woman in the world, was included in the Time 100 as an icon in 2015, received an honorary doctorate from the New School in 2016, and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019. Her words still resonate because they come from lived independence: “The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself.”