Life-Long Feminist: A Fireside Chat with Diane von Furstenberg
When Diane von Furstenberg was starting out in the fashion industry, there was no one else like her. It was a time when very few female designers were also the founders of their own labels, which, though now commonplace, is no less impressive. She started her fashion career at 22, had two children, separated from her husband Prince Egon von Furstenberg, and sold her company by the time her children were teenagers. After launching a publishing house in Paris, she realized her fashion brand was linked to her identity, and she wanted it back.
“The people who bought my brand had destroyed it,” she told Moira Forbes at Female Founders Fund’s CEO Summit in August. When she went to see the new owners, they treated her like a “has been,” she said, and her anxiety got so bad she developed cancer in her tongue. “Then I’m starting to see that the young hip girls were buying the old dresses in the vintage shops. Little by little I got my name back, and I got myself a carriage house in the Meatpacking district.” At the time, the Meatpacking district was full of butchers. Her contemporaries wondered what she was doing there, but soon, she and her new team began to rebuild the brand. “Now, if you want to be relevant to today’s time, you have to turn this huge dinosaur, and it’s so heavy and it’s so complicated, you go through this enormous…but we’re doing it,” she said. “I have a CEO and a new team and they’re going to make that happen.”
At this stage in her career, von Furstenberg is deciding what she wants her legacy to look like, and how she wants to pave the way for more women like her. “I want to be able to use my voice, my experience, my knowledge, and my connection, to make all women be the women they want to be,” she said.
“If you stay honest and if you accept your imperfections, they become your assets. I feel like a loser at least once a week! Only losers don’t feel like losers.”
Here’s some of her best advice for navigating the business world.
On her mother’s best advice
When von Furstenberg’s mother was 22, she was sent to Auschwitz for 13 months during the last year of World War II. When the war ended, she weighed 49 pounds. “My mother never allowed me to be a victim,” von Furstenberg said. “She told me fear was not an option, so if I was afraid of the dark, she would put me in a dark closet. Today she would get arrested. Once you are in a dark closet — first of all, it doesn’t stay dark, you immediately see a little tiny piece of light — but also, why would I be afraid of the dark? My mother said, Fear? Take it away. You have the same situation, but the fear should be gone away.”
On her most important relationship
“You must always know that the most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself,” she said. “Your character is that little house you have inside yourself that fortress, that strength that you are building inside yourself. You could lose everything, you can lose your health, your wealth, your children, your freedom, even but you will never ever lose your character, and that is the most important thing at all times.” She advocates for a daily self-care practice that allows you to walk out the door each morning feeling confident. “You should be able to wink at yourself in the mirror, wave at your shadow, you must. The best satisfaction in life are things that it’s hard for you to explain to others.”
On self-doubt
In the fashion industry, it’s easy to compare yourself with others, but appearances don’t often match up with reality. “You look at the woman across the room, and she looks so together, and she looks so secure, and she looks like she knows it all. And she doesn’t, and she looks at you,” von Furstenberg said. “For her, you are the woman across the room.”
“I’ve met the most successful people in the world, and they all feel like that, I promise you. I say, only losers don’t feel like losers,” she said.
On her biggest challenges
“My weakness is that I think because I am able to do pretty much what I want to do, what I visualize, I’m pretty much able to execute, I have a tendency to think anybody can do that if they’re given the opportunity,” von Furstenberg said. “So my big mistake always is believing that people can have the vision and they couldn’t.” As a result, she has learned to delegate tasks more carefully.
Von Furstenberg has also said she regrets never writing a business plan. “I was always catching up. Vision, I know. When I have an idea to sell, I know,” she said, but a business plan would have allowed her to project further into the future.
On the wrap dress
Von Furstenberg invented the wrap dress 45 years ago, in 1974. A combination of a feminine silhouette and hardy fabric, the dress has endured four decades and many, many iterations. “Anne Hathaway the actress, I met her mother, her mother told me, ‘I seduced her father with the dress. Actually, she was conceived in the dress.’” Because she’s created so many other products over the years, von Furstenberg resisted accepting the wrap dress as her greatest contribution to fashion. “Five years ago, when I celebrated the 40th anniversary, I had a big exhibition at LACMA, when I drove and I saw that huge building with all of that, that I accepted it, I said okay, that’s fine, I own it finally.”
On paying it forward
“I have a little game that I play with myself I try to send at least one or two first emails in the morning are things that don’t benefit me,” von Furstenberg said. In these emails, she likes to connect people who should meet IRL, or who might be able to collaborate in a productive way. “With email it’s so nice, you can introduce this person to that person and you don’t have to leave a message, you don’t have to talk, you can just explain it well, and you can change people’s lives, you really can,” she said. “You make things happen and you realize you have a magic wand, and that is a great gift. And you all do, we all have a magic wand. It’s a great thing for your karma.”
On women’s strength
As a result of being marginalized throughout their lives, von Furstenberg said, women are tougher than they look. The Me Too movement has empowered women to stand up for themselves in the workplace. “That doesn’t mean you have to be aggressive, that doesn’t mean you have to make men feel small, but you shouldn’t feel small,” von Furstenberg said. “In moments of tragedy, I’ve never met a woman who is not strong, but very often, they don’t show that strength.”
On what she needs to be productive
“I need a certain amount of solitude, silence, empty spaces. I can’t lose myself,” she said. “If I lose myself, I have nothing left. I think that’s really important. I can’t lose myself. Because then I would be lost.”
Overall, von Furstenberg shared insights for approaching life in the business world, more so than tactical management advice. “I’m not very good at giving this advice. I’m very good at giving advice for life and things that are really major, but to give you management advice, I’m bad. I’m bad,” she said. “Don’t come to me for that.” And while she’s still hands-on at her brand, don’t be surprised if you see a DVF manifesto sometime soon, because her focus now is cementing her legacy. “You know my new thing? I want to create a movement for women,” she said. “I’m writing a manifesto now, I have these ideas, I’m very excited about that. I like leadership, I don’t even like the word leadership. I like ‘inspirationship.’”
At the end of the day, she said, “the role of the brand is to give you your best friend in the closet.”