Fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg speaks onstage during the Daily Front Row's Fashion Media Awards at Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown on September 8, 2017 in New York City.
Gallery of Diane von Fürstenberg
Diane von Fürstenberg by François Halard for Vogue, 2006.
Gallery of Diane von Fürstenberg
Diane Von Fürstenberg by Ron Galella at Studio 54, 1978.
Achievements
2018 CFDA Swarovski Award for Positive Change winner, Diane Von Furstenberg attends the 2018 CFDA Fashion Awards Winners Walk at Brooklyn Museum on June 4, 2018 in New York City.
Fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg speaks onstage during the Daily Front Row's Fashion Media Awards at Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown on September 8, 2017 in New York City.
2018 CFDA Swarovski Award for Positive Change winner, Diane Von Furstenberg attends the 2018 CFDA Fashion Awards Winners Walk at Brooklyn Museum on June 4, 2018 in New York City.
(Along with the hosts' favorite recipes, 33 unique and ins...)
Along with the hosts' favorite recipes, 33 unique and inspiring dining situations are presented here. From Calvin Klein's country house to Dolly Parton's pied-a-terre, attention is paid to the presentation of meals, and to the linens, silver, china, crystal, and decorative accessories. The rooms are beautiful, and the choice of recipes is offbeat and amusing.
Diane von Fürstenberg, formerly Princess Diane of Fürstenberg, is a Belgian-American fashion designer, best known for her eponymous label, Diane von Furstenberg, which is often shortened to DVF. She is the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
Background
Ethnicity:
Father was a Moldovian and her mother was a Greek-born Jewish.
Mrs. Fürstenberg was born as Diane Simone Michelle Halfin in Brussels, Belgium, on December 31, 1946. Her well-to-do Jewish parents, Leon and Liliane Nahmias Halfin provided their daughter with a comfortable childhood. Her mother, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, imbued her with confidence and a sense of self-worth. 18 months before Mrs. Fürstenberg was born, her mother was a prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp. She has spoken broadly about her mother's influence in her life, crediting her with teaching her that "fear is not an option."
Education
Diane von Fürstenberg attended schools in Switzerland, Spain, and England, and in 1965 entered the University of Madrid. Transferring a year later to the University of Geneva, she selected economics as a major.
After her marriage, the von Fürstenbergs moved to New York City in late 1969, where her husband went to work on Wall Street. In 1970 she began designing clothes. Although she had no financial need to work thanks to her marriage, she has stated that she craved independence. Encouraged by designers Bill Blass and Kenny Lane and by Diane Vreeland, editor of the influential Vogue magazine, Diane von Fürstenberg put together a collection of her dress designs. In April 1970 Mrs. von Fürstenberg revealed her first collection at the Gotham Hotel in New York City. The price range was moderate, from $25 to $100.
When her marriage failed, Mrs. von Fürstenberg aimed even more at making herself financially independent and stable. Because she had little experience in producing clothes on a large scale, Mrs. von Fürstenberg at first worked with major women's clothing manufacturers, but in April 1972 she established her own manufacturing business. With the help of friend and entrepreneur Richard Conrad, and with a $30, 000 loan from her father, Diane von Fürstenberg opened a Seventh Avenue showroom. Although her designs were variations on items in her initial collection, she produced a new, very popular sweater dress named "Angela," after the black activist Angela Davis. Next came Diane von Fürstenberg's enormously popular wrap dress. Fed up with the bell-bottom jeans and sexless pantsuits of the day, she devised a slinky, moderately priced wrap dress that turned millions of mall mothers and working women into saucy sirens virtually overnight. After only a few months of business, her wholesale sales topped $1 million.
In 1973 Diane von Fürstenberg bought an old farmhouse in Connecticut, where she retreated from her frenetic business life. By 1975, she was making 15,000 of the dresses a week. By 1976, she had sold 5 million wrap dresses, landed covers of Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, and created the fragrance Tatiana, named after her daughter. She added jewelry, furs, shoes, scarves, and sunglasses to the articles bearing her signature. She branched into housewares: sheets, bath towels, and home accessories. Soon her trademark began appearing on fashions for children.
Her dynamic career and elegant looks kept her in the public eye. Diane von Fürstenberg, the princess-turned-designer, was featured often in magazine articles and interviews. In 1977 she published Diane von Fürstenberg's Book of Beauty. She appealed to working women because her practical designs acknowledged the growing number of career women. In 1984 Mrs. von Fürstenberg opened a Fifth Avenue boutique catering to women who desired a more luxurious type of women's apparel.
In 1985, she moved to Paris, where she founded a publishing house. In the early 1990s, she moved into the home-shopping QVC world with her line Silk Assets. Finding moderate success, she moved back to the United States in 1990 and settled on a farm in Connecticut. For the next several years, Mrs. von Fürstenberg published a series of books. First was a trio of coffee table books that exposed the interior lives of the rich and famous. Among them were Beds (1991), The Bath (1993), The Table (1996).
Seeing new possibilities for commercial success, Diane von Fürstenberg, in the mid-1990s, began marketing her dresses, home furnishings and other items on a cable television home shopping network. During her first segment, she sold $1. 2 million worth of clothes in two hours.
In March 2010, London hotel Claridge's unveiled a collaboration with Mrs. von Fürstenberg which saw her design a series of the legendary hotel's rooms and suites. The partnership was the latest development in a long relationship between the hotel and the designer, whose past collections had owed some their inspiration to the Art Deco premises. In August 2010, she promised to give away half of her fortune to the Giving Pledge - an initiative set up by Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett to encourage America's richest families to donate money to society's most serious problems.
She unveiled a new diffusion line, named Diane, in February 2011. The collection of re-issued vintage prints in classic ready-to-wear and accessories styles, was available from Dover Street Market in London, as well as from Diane von Fürstenberg stores. She launched a childrenswear collection in collaboration with Gap Kids in March 2012.
In the fall of 2014 the designer released her memoir, the empowerment-themed The Woman I Wanted to Be. At the same, the reality TV show House of DVF was launched on E!, following a group of young women competing to become Diane von Fürstenberg's brand ambassador.
Diane von Fürstenberg is renowned for the designing of her iconic wrap dress for the working woman in 1974. Mrs. von Fürstenberg is a recipient of a number of awards, for instance, in 2005, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) awarded her a lifetime achievement award, and the following year named her as their president. In 2010, she was awarded a Gold Medal at the annual Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Gold Medal Gala.
Moreover, Mrs. von Fürstenberg launched the DVF Awards in 2010, a scheme which aims to recognise women whose leadership skills and vision have has a positive impact on the lives of other women around the world. In 2011 she received the Award of Courage for her enduring efforts in combating AIDS by internationally renowned charity amfAR and also the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal from the Municipal Art Society of New York, in recognition of her "outstanding contribution to the built environment of New York City" - chosen for helping to redevelop the Meatpacking District, as well her work supporting the city's High Line Park - a public space built on an elevated derelict railway track.
Her clothes have been worn by many celebrities including Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Madonna, Tina Brown, Jessica Alba, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez.
(1975-1976, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.)
Diane Von Fürstenberg evening dress
(Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadephia.)
Diane Von Fürstenberg wrap dress
(Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadephia.)
A sketch from the Diane von Furstenberg Resort collection
Diane von Fürstenberg dress
Diane von Furstenberg resort collection
DVF sketch
Sketch for Michelle Obama
Views
Quotations:
"I design for the woman who loves being a woman."
"Italy will always have the best food."
"I travel light. I think the most important thing is to be in a good mood and enjoy life, wherever you are."
"I had arranged a birthday party for him and my children, who are all Aquarians. Instead, we got married. I ran out of excuses. It was just us and my children."
"I travel in so many different ways; I travel high, I rough it... it all depends on who I travel with."
"I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life - and I became that woman."
"There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!"
"Animals come from nature. They were not designed. All my inspiration comes from nature, whether it's an animal or the layout of bark or of a leaf. Sometimes my patterns are very bold, and you can barely see where they come from, but all the textures and all the prints come out of nature."
"The most important relationship you have in life is the one you have with yourself. And then after that, I'd say once you have that, it may be hard work, but you can actually design your life."
Personality
Mrs. von Fürstenberg proved herself a financial genius and fashion wizard whose achievement was based on creativity, imagination, and hard work.
Connections
At university, when Diane von Fürstenberg was 18, she met Prince Egon von Fürstenberg, the elder son of Prince Tassilo zu Fürstenberg, a German Roman Catholic prince, and his first wife, Clara Agnelli, an heiress to the Fiat automotive fortune and member of the Italian nobility. Married in 1969, the couple had two children, Prince Alexander, and Princess Tatiana who were born in New York City. She is now the grandmother of nine, including Princess Talita.
The Fürstenbergs' marriage, although unpopular with the groom's family because of the bride's Jewish ethnicity, was considered dynastic, and on her marriage she became Her Serene Highness Princess Diane of Fürstenberg. However, she lost any claim to the title following her divorce and her remarriage. In 2001, she married American media mogul Barry Diller.
