How I became a fashion icon
Designer Diane von Furstenberg shares advice.
Our series “How I became a …” digs into the stories of accomplished and influential people, finding out how they got to where they are in their careers. (Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
A household name around the world, Diane von Furstenberg is an icon. The designer of the famous wrap dress and leader of a powerhouse brand, von Furstenberg spends her time cementing her legacy with her brand and through charity work.
“One of the things that I tease is that I became an icon, and now I am in the age of becoming an oracle,” she says. “So now it’s time for me to share my experiences and all of the things that I have learned.”
USA TODAY caught up with the fashion designer, author and philanthropist.
Question: Who’s been your biggest mentor?
Diane von Furstenberg: One was the Italian manufacturer I used to work for when I first started and taught me everything about printing and textiles and everything else. Then, there was Diana Vreeland (a noted fashion columnist and editor for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue), who was the first person who actually paid attention to the new dresses that I made. She gave me the confidence and put it in the magazine in a big way and put me on the map.
Q: What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?
Furstenberg: At age 28, when I was on the cover of Newsweek. I went to Canada for personal reasons, and I forgot my passport because I forgot Canada was a different country. I had no passport, and I showed them the cover, and they let me go – which was clearly a different time.
Q: What does your career path look like?
Furstenberg: My career’s been a long journey and also like a roller coaster because I started really fast with a huge American dream at the age of 22. By age 27 I was making 25,000 dresses a week, so I had a huge, huge, huge, fast, fast start. All of this was happening, all of this saturation – I wasn’t equipped for it. Then, I had to license my fashion business, and then I started the cosmetic business. Within five years I turned that into something big. And then I sold everything and I thought I was finished. I moved to Paris for a while and I had a publishing house, and then I came back and I felt like a loser. I thought I had lost my identity, and then I discovered (TV shopping channel) QVC. I went from being a “has-been” to a pioneer in a matter of months. Four years ago, I celebrated the 40th anniversary of the wrap dress, and now I’m embarking into the legacy phase of my life. I really want to focus personally on empowering women and philanthropy.
Q: How does your passion for philanthropy fit into your career path?
Furstenberg: Nine and a half years ago, I started DVF Awards with the help of my family foundation, the Diller-von Furstenberg Foundation. We give exposure, money, support and mentoring to these extraordinary women who have the strength to fight, the courage to survive and the leadership to inspire. That has been really amazing, but it’s not just that. I’m on the board of Vital Voices, and empowering women is my mission. I will do more and more of that.
For years, they wanted me on the board that manages the Statue of Liberty, and I really didn’t want to go on another board. I never really paid that much attention to what the Statue of Liberty was. Then they gave me a book, and I thought the story was fascinating. Stephan Briganti, the president of this foundation, came to me saying he had read my book, and in my book I talk about my mother. My mother was a survivor of the Holocaust (at age 22 she was a prisoner in Auschwitz). She always told me, “God saved me so that I could give you life. By giving me life, you gave me my life back. You are my torch of freedom.”
So, he said, “you can not (turn down a board seat) if your mother called you the torch of freedom.” So that made me go in. My big role was to raise money for building the museum of the Statue of Liberty that will be on Liberty Island – it will open in May 2019. I helped raise about $85-$90 million, and the museum is almost finished. I sold the idea of making a documentary on the Statue of Liberty for HBO, which will also come out next year. The more I dug into it, the more fascinated I was.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
Furstenberg: There is no typical day. Let’s say that I now am at the autumn of my life, and therefore it’s about focusing always on the things that I leave behind. So, I am giving out the best that I can both to the company and (elsewhere), so my typical day is trying to find the clarity to find all of the things I need to do to leave my legacy and to have the company live on and have a relationship with my children and my grandchildren. (Also), all of the projects I have – I’m on the board of the Statue of Liberty; I’m on the board of The Shed, which will also open next year; I’m on the board of the Film Academy museum in Los Angeles, which will also open next year. So there’s a lot of projects and a lot of things.
Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your career?
Furstenberg: Very often, the world thinks you are all the way high, and you yourself know that you’re not because you’re having some issues. And sometimes people think you are at your lowest, and you also know that it isn’t true because you’re already on the way up.
Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
Furstenberg: I don’t know what it means to follow in my footsteps. The most important advice I would give anyone about the career is to be true to yourself, to be hard on yourself and not to be delusional.