VON FURSTENBERG, DIANE

VON FURSTENBERG, DIANE (1946– ), U.S. fashion designer. Von Furstenberg, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, became an internationally celebrated designer whose achievements were predicated largely on one simple dress. She was born Diane Halfin in Brussels, 18 months after her mother, Liliane, was liberated from Auschwitz. Her father, Leon, a Russian émigré, raised the family in Belgium and Diane was educated in Spain, England, and Switzerland. While studying economics at the University of Geneva, she met Egon von Furstenberg, a Swiss-born German prince. They married in 1969 and moved to New York. In 1970, shortly after the birth of her first child, Alexandre, she launched Diane Von Furstenberg Studio. A year later, her daughter, Tatiana, was born. By 1972, she had created the dress that was to catapult her to fame. Made of Italian printed jersey, it was a simple wraparound style designed to cling to the body without looking vulgar. It seemed to symbolize the vast changes in sexual and social attitudes then taking place in the U.S. and was a nationwide success, landing Von Furstenberg on the covers of Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. By 1976, the modestly priced dress – known simply as The Wrap – had sold in the millions. A version was hung in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. But by the late 1970s, von Furstenberg's marriage had dissolved and the market had become oversaturated with the dress. Demand dwindled. She sold her apparel business to carl rosen of Puritan Fashions and licensed her name for products ranging from luggage to cosmetics. In 1979, she created Tatiana, a fragrance that became a best seller. But she was forced to sell her cosmetics and fragrance business in 1983 because it was undercapitalized. Von Furstenberg left the U.S., traveled widely, lived in Bali, then Paris and returned to New York in 1990. In 1992, she created a company called Silk Assets and offered its products on QVC, a television shopping channel. QVC was eventually acquired by barry diller , the founder of Fox Broadcasting and a long-time intimate who would become Von Furstenberg's second husband. In her first appearance on the channel, Von Furstenberg sold $1.3 million worth of silk separates in one hour. In the late 1990s, she revived   her wrap dresses and found a receptive new audience in the daughters of her earliest customers. Her company expanded into jewelry and cosmetics and by 2005, Diane von Furstenberg boutiques were in New York, Miami, London, and Paris. Von Furstenberg has also produced books and been involved in movies. In 1998, she published a memoir, Diane: A Signature Life. Earlier, she had produced a series of home furnishing books. She was an executive producer of Forty Shades of Blue, a drama that won a prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. She was elected to the boards of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and U.S.A. Network Inc. in 1999 and was awarded a CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Von Furstenberg, an early supporter of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, was honored by the Anti-Defamation League and by Israel's Shenkar College. (Mort Sheinman (2nd ed.)