Interview with Diane von Furstenberg: her “magical” wrap dress and her fearlessness – BBC News

What do you wear to an interview with Diane Von Furstenberg, the famous fashion designer who invented a dress so famous that people are still talking about it fifty years later?

Von Furstenberg, 77, launched her famous wrap dress in America in 1974 and told me that, through “something magical, it took off.”

This magic seems to be a combination of style, dynamism and timing.

It was a time of liberation, when women were pushing to be taken seriously in the workplace.

The dress was flattering but office-appropriate.

The stretchy jersey fabric and wrap design “hugs your body and makes you look ‘proper’ but at the same time sexy,” Von Furstenberg said.

She had already created a wrapover modeled on a dancer’s cardigan, with a matching skirt and pants.

But during Watergate, she was delighted to see President Nixon’s daughter, Julia Nixon Eisenhower, on television defending her father in the face of political scandal.

“She wore my wrap top with a skirt. I was like “oh look”, I was so proud.

And then I said to myself, “you know what, we should make a dress out of it.”

In the years since, Madonna, Jerry Hall, the Princess of Wales and generations of regular working women have worn versions of this dress.

Oprah Winfrey remembers saving up for this when she was a young journalist.

The designer is now the focus of the upcoming Disney Plus/Hulu documentary, titled Diane Von Furstenberg: Woman In Charge, revealing what makes her tick.

She told me she didn’t know what she wanted to do as a career, “but I knew what kind of woman I wanted to be.” I wanted to be a responsible woman.”

For her, it was about being free to live as she wanted.

This was back when, initially, American women couldn’t even have a checkbook or credit card without a man’s cosignature (women in the UK couldn’t open a bank account of their own name before 1975).

Former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton considers von Furstenberg “one of the very first women who really broke the glass ceiling in business.”

The designer became a regular on chat shows, celebrated as a Jewish immigrant princess (her first marriage was to a German prince) who, as the famous American presenter David Letterman put it, “reinvented the dress”.

The irony of her first husband being German was never lost on von Furstenberg.

His mother, Lily Halfin, survived the Auschwitz and Ravensbruck concentration camps during World War II.

She was released, weighing only 20kg, and doctors told her fiancé it would be too dangerous for her to have a child.

But 18 months later, Diane was born.

“My mother said, ‘God saved me so I could give you life.’ By giving yourself life, you gave me mine back. You are my torch of freedom.

But her mother’s parenting style was harsh.

Even when she was very little, Diane was told that she had no right to be afraid of anything or to be a victim.

It was as if Lily was preparing her daughter, in case Diane had to experience the horrors she had endured.

“If I was afraid of the dark, she locked me in the dark closet. Today she could be arrested for this.

“But as a result, she taught me that fear is not an option. Push past fear and face whatever you have to face. And that’s the most amazing lesson.”

The designer seems fearless. She lived life to the fullest, enjoying a string of famous friends and lovers.

In the documentary, she says she was offered a threesome with Mick Jagger and David Bowie. She turned them down, deciding that saying no would be a better story.

She also faced bankruptcy several times. After losing everything and starting over, she then turned to the new QVC shopping channel in the United States to sell her dresses.

The high-end fashion world may have sneered. But when they first appeared in 1993, the dresses sold out in just two hours, with orders worth $1.3 million. It was back to business.

Von Furstenberg’s life, as documentary director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy told me, is “a hymn to freedom.”

The Pakistani-born director of the still-secret upcoming Star Wars film has already won two Oscars for her documentaries on the struggles of women in Pakistan.

Obaid-Chinoy says she “has made films her whole life about women faced with extraordinary circumstances, who, in the face of adversity, rose up and truly were trailblazers.”

She describes the designer as “a woman who truly created something from nothing and did it at a time when women weren’t even part of the conversation.”

The director, who launched into the universe of superheroes and directed Ms Marvel for television, also gave us a little clue about the making of the new Star Wars film.

It centers on another heroine.

The film focuses on “quite Daisy Ridley” (who played her breakthrough role as Rey in 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens).

But the film will also include “many of the characters that we’re bringing back into the Star Wars universe, and the characters that we’re breathing new life into.”

Despite reducing her business since the pandemic, von Furstenberg is delighted that her creations are still sustainable for new generations.

The wrap dress, she says, is now being rediscovered by young women.

“It has never happened that a dress has survived 50 years and this is even more of a revolution than the first time.”

In an industry obsessed with age, the designer seems completely unconcerned about the idea of ​​getting older.

In the documentary’s opening scene, we see her climb into her bathroom sink, without makeup, to make a face in the mirror while explaining how wrinkles draw “the map of your life.”

In person, she laughs and tells me she looks terrible in these photos.

But she doesn’t seem to care anyway, vehemently that age is something we should accept with pride.

She tells me that her attitude may have something to do with her mother’s story.

“My birth was a triumph of life, it was a gift. So every day I have to honor life.”

It’s a mantra she leaves with me as she leaves the interview, dressed, of course, in one of her own dresses. It’s white with a black pattern, but it’s not an iconic wrap dress.

For what it’s worth, I opted for a brightly colored summer dress that I bought on a Greek beach years ago. We didn’t discuss our outfit choices. It was probably for the best.