Photography by Suzy Gorman
From left: Fashion writer Derek Blasberg, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, Caleres CEO Diane Sullivan, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, Wash. U. Chancellor Andrew Martin, and the Saint Louis Fashion Fund's Susan Sherman
Update: You can watch a recording of “Speaking of Fashion: A Conversation with Diane von Furstenberg” here.
Original story: When she was 13, Diane von Furstenberg’s mother told her that “we all do the same things. We work, we eat, we cry, we make love. What makes you different is how you do it.”
On Wednesday evening, von Furstenberg—the fashion icon and inventor of the popular wrap dress—gave a glimpse of exactly how she did it to 800 people gathered inside Graham Memorial Chapel at Washington University. The event was “Speaking of Fashion: A Conversation with Diane von Furstenberg,” hosted by the Saint Louis Fashion Fund and sponsored by Caleres. Earlier in the day, von Furstenberg met with 12 St. Louis brands and five Wash. U. fashion students to dispense advice, and made an appearance at a trunk show of DVF fashions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. She was also awarded the Annual Fashion Fund Award.
It wasn’t von Furstenberg’s first time in St. Louis, she told interviewer Derek Blasberg, the former head of fashion and beauty at YouTube and a New York Times best-selling author. In the 1970s, she traveled to the city for an appearance at Stix, Baer and Fuller. It was the same decade that she launched her brand with a dress design that would land her on the cover of Newsweek, which called her “the most remarkable woman since Coco Chanel.” The iconic wrap dress made women feel powerful—von Furstenberg’s tagline for the garment was “Feel like a woman, wear a dress.”
But almost 50 years later, von Furstenberg told me, she doesn’t feel like she just invented the dress—the dress invented her. “I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be,” she says. “And I became that woman because of the dress. Because of the dress, the more confident I was and the more confident I was making other women. It was a moment of women's liberation. So in the end, yes, I did invent the wrap dress, but it's really the wrap dress that invented me. Now that I look back 50 years, I feel like I'm almost a conduit.”
Throughout the evening, von Furstenberg recounted the early years of her career—kickstarted by a meeting that her then-husband Prince Egon von Furstenberg arranged with the editor in chief of Vogue, Diana Vreeland—as well as the trials she had to face (oversaturation in the market, buying her brand name back after selling). Interspersed were bits of advice that the Own It author tries to live by: connecting someone to a person they wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to meet, giving time to someone she wouldn’t normally once a week, inspiring people by storytelling with vulnerability, and fighting against injustice. But she also kept it cool for a Q&A with the audience. What would she do differently if she were starting her business today? “Nothing.” Does she see a fashion trend that will have a similar impact as the wrap dress. “No.” Does she have a tip for someone starting out in business? “Good luck.”
The evening wasn’t without the aforementioned vulnerability, however. One of the most poignant moments was when von Furstenberg shared with the audience what she called an X-ray of her soul. During a recent medical scan, von Furstenberg imagined what the machine would reveal if it could produce an image of her soul. Von Furstenberg’s mother, Lily Halfin, was a Holocaust survivor. Before von Furstenberg was born, a doctor warned Lily that she shouldn’t try to get pregnant—“you will not make it and your child will not be normal,” von Furstenberg said he warned. She continued: “I didn’t realize how much I was the fruit of my mother. Eighteen months before I was born, my mother was a skeleton in a field of ashes.” During the scan, von Furstenberg imagined her soul as a little green sprig in that field of ashes that unfurled into a great big fern of opportunities.
So did she find success because of what she did or how she did it? I asked.
“You go along, you do the best you can, you know?” she replied. “I started so young—I had no idea what I was doing, but you keep on inventing yourself. I had great successes and failures, but you just keep on going.”
