Diane von Furstenberg's wrap dress, a hit in the 1970s, has become a fashion staple again. Susan Carroll meets the designer in her native Brussels, and we present a selection of her dresses and the garments they have inspired.Photographs: Alan Betson.Styled by Catherine Condell
It all started with a dress. A simple, jersey-knit wrap dress that women could slip on for work and play. Designer Diane von Furstenberg sold five million of them in the mid-1970s, a success that catapulted her onto the cover of Newsweek and into the arms of famous playboys such as Richard Gere, Ryan O'Neal and Warren Beatty. In Brussels to give a talk at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, von Furstenberg is a long streak of glamour. At 59, she still has a fierce feline elegance, all high cheekbones and snake-hips in one of her own dresses.
She was born Diane Halfin in Brussels in 1946 to wealthy Jewish parents, but, before the talk, the designer tells me she feels little or no connection to her home town. "I grew up knowing I wanted to leave," she confesses. She got her chance at 13, heading off to posh schools in Switzerland, England and Spain.
While studying economics at the University of Geneva, she met Austro-Italian prince Egon von Furstenberg, a scion of a German aristocratic family and the Italian Agnellis, owners of the Fiat car empire. "Usually in fairytales, when girls marry a prince, it's the end of the story," she says. "It was the beginning of mine."
Despite her jetset lifestyle, von Furstenberg wanted to maintain her independence, a trait she attributes to the influence of her mother, a concentration camp survivor. She worked as an apprentice at an Italian friend's knitting factory, her first exposure to the jersey knit and printing techniques that would later make her name.
When she became pregnant, the pair married in a hurry and settled in New York, making the most of the louche 1970s party scene. Von Furstenberg took samples of her designs around the magazines. When Vogue doyenne Diana Vreeland liked them, she had the confidence to get started. "I pawned my engagement ring, rented a showroom and hired a salesman," she recalls. It wasn't long before one item was flying off the shelves - a washable, wrinkle-proof wrap dress that flattered most figures and fit most occasions. The epitome of European sophistication with a strong-featured face once immortalised by Andy Warhol, von Furstenberg was one of the first people to market her image as her brand, travelling to stores to demonstrate and show off her clothes. She appeared in her own ads, and her trademark was her looping signature.
By the mid-1970s, she had added that signature to perfume, to luggage, and other products, in a flurry of licensing deals. She had a broken marriage, two children and was worth $40 million in annual sales. But this is where the fairytale strays into the woods. "It all happened so fast," she says. "All of a sudden, my products had saturated the market. I had $4 million worth of wrap dresses in warehouses that I couldn't sell." Worse, she had lost control of her brand, diluted by the licensing. Edging toward bankruptcy, she sold the dress business and, later, her make-up brand.
Demoralised, the designer fled to a relationship with Italian writer Alain Elkann and a home in Paris, from where she published glossy interior decorating books. "I lost confidence," she says. "I thought the consumer was still interested in my products, but I didn't know how to connect with them again." In the 1990s, having gone back to the US, she saw her opportunity. "I became a pioneer again, selling a collection of silk clothes on QVC, the shopping channel, and wrote a memoir. Then I decided to start again - just as before, with one dress."
After noticing that young women were snapping up her original dress in vintage shops, she opened the Diane von Furstenberg Studio to design reasonably priced versions for upmarket department stores. A few years later, she had turned a profit and her wrap dress has become a fashion staple once again, being sported by the likes of Paris Hilton and Renee Zellweger.
Von Furstenberg is now married to Barry Diller, one of the biggest media moguls in the US. A week after her Brussels talk, she was given a lifetime achievement award from the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America in New York.
From the beginning of her career, the designer drew on her femininity - the original tagline for her dresses was "feel like a woman, wear a dress". She somewhat disingenuously claims to have no head for business, but is adamant about her support for women entrepreneurs, who she hopes will be inspired by her. "I love being a woman and I love women. I think that if I have made any contribution to the world, it's to have made women feel more confident."
Bella Mamma maternity shop in Ranelagh also stocks Diane von Furstenberg's wrap dresses for mothers-to-be. The Business in Nenagh will host an exhibition of von Furstenberg's designs early next year, along with her new cosmetics range. It is expected the designer herself will attend the opening