Diane von Furstenberg Wraps Me In a Wrap Dress, and Her Wisdom

Have I actually lived my life?

Today’s Deep Dive post is brought to you by Diane von Furstenberg…! I dug through her archives! The zillion racks of fab wrap dresses! This is to celebrate the launch of DVF Vintage at the brand’s HQ at 440 West 14th Street, which runs until the end of November.

Getting to Diane von Furstenberg’s

With Diane at the DVF Vintage opening. I tried to buy the dress I’m wearing, but it is not for sale — it’s one of her first wrap-dress creations, the same one she wore on the cover of Newsweek in 1976.

It’s raining as I sit in the backseat of a massive black SUV, driving 2.5 hours upstate to Diane von Furstenberg’s compound, which she has christened “Cloudwalk.” She bought the massive property for her 27th birthday in 1974 with her wrap dress earnings.

The task is to go through von Furstenberg’s archive and discuss certain pieces, as DVF headquarters at 440 West 14th Street has launched a curated vintage section that will run until the end of November. The DVF vintage space is a treasure trove: days later, after I visit DVF’s archive, I snag an early ‘00s bead-slathered, cyan-splattered slip skirt at the pop-up opening. I later learn that the shimmering skirt was a sample from Diane’s own closet.

There’s been a lot of digging into the DVF archives from the brand side recently. DVF has reintroduced prints from the ‘70s, and they are in the midst of tinkering with the newer iteration of the wrap dress. I hear from a little birdy that the brand wants to plump up the collar and thicken the belt of the current wrap dress, tapping back into its retro-chic roots.

I like this move by the brand to revisit its own design history. Sure, I have Diane’s documentary and autobiography tattooed into my temporal lobe, but not everyone does. The people need to know that this is a history-making, Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art-minted dress, and how it created the DVF empire! If it were up to me, more brands would go into the depths of their archives. Speaking of…can Diane please relaunch her hyacinth-drenched Tatiana scent from 1975?

Vogue September 1980

Side note: My mother-in-law tells me not to wear a random dress to meet DVF. I get it—that would be like attempting to teach scripture to the pope. So, I’m wearing an old pantsuit. I’m postpartum, and the button on the pants is about to launch from the waist like a cork on a champagne bottle. I need a wrap dress stat.

Meeting Diane (Dee-ahhn!)

I pull up to DVF’s home and then enter. I’m not great at describing interiors, but there are a zillion books that seem to touch the heavens and a massive 12-foot antique desk. I spot a handful of massive Warhols of von Furstenberg towards the ceiling. Diane comes up to me and offers me a coffee in that Belgian lilt, that jet-set Euro twang. I’m immediately hypnotized. I remember my former Vogue colleague from 10 years ago describing the designer as foxy. Von Furstenberg is that indeed: catlike with a deep-set feline stare that tears into my soul.

DVF in her wrap dress for Newsweek in 1976

I sit on a plush chair while five women on Diane’s team also sit around us. Diane is curled up on the chair facing me, her legs tucked like a cat. She looks at me and says, “So, tell me your story.” Suddenly, I feel like I’m the only one in the room. That’s the designer’s seduction.

She asks me about my upbringing. I tell her I was born and raised in a tiny town in Massachusetts, and then she calls me a “country girl”. Not totally: I share that I spent a zillion years in Crimea and Saint Petersburg, Russia. Then she asks me, with that searing stare: “Did you have an affair?” I tell her about how I briefly dated a tax evader in Saint Petersburg, whom I met at Subway…the sandwich shop. “I wish I had something more interesting to tell you!” I say. But I don’t feel bad, nor am I embarrassed. Who can compete with DVF? Mick Jagger and David Bowie proposed a threesome to her back in the day.

The Wrap Dress Archive

Now for the motherlode. I’m in an adjacent warehouse to DVF’s home, which is a cornucopia of wrap dresses, all organized by year by her young archivist, Coco. This is the genesis of von Furstenberg’s ferocious rise!

I strip in front of Diane, and she puts me into a verdant green jersey dress in the “twig print.” This is one of her earliest pieces. The fabric is slinky and grippy, almost like a man’s hand is tenderly wrapped around my waist.

Diane von Furstenberg at The Met

The dress, which is 50 years old, fits like a glove. I feel electric, like I have a slice of Diane’s über confidence; her über sensuality coursing through me. “I made the wrap dress, but the dress made me,” she tells me, walking me through a zillion racks of archival pieces. The piece is a classic, maybe akin to a T-shirt or a suit jacket. I love the way Diane wore her wrap dress in the ‘70s: that massive collar, sassily flicked upward like a holier-than-thou royal.

Other pieces I spot include the Diane von Furstenberg logo-print dress that Paris Hilton and SATC’s Carrie Bradshaw wore. The logomania is so early ‘00s, but the typeface is pure ‘70s. I spot a piece of Furstenberg Couture, a heavily embroidered jacket made by her ex-husband, Egon von Furstenberg.

A Bit About the Wrap Dress That Put Diane on the Map

The wrap dress has become my savior. The piece is saucy, slithering around my waist. Diane comments that the wrap dress is great for work (the collar!) and for a date because it can easily “open up.” If that isn’t a selling point…I don’t know what is?

Here’s some history about Diane and, yes, the wrap dress. For the uninitiated, von Furstenberg was the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her mother survived Auschwitz, weighing only 49 pounds, and miraculously gave birth to Diane. She shipped Diane off to boarding school, and it was there that Diane had a taste of the jet set crew and met the German Prince Egon von Furstenberg, whom she later married at only 23 after becoming pregnant with her first child.

A dress by Diane von Furstenberg on the right (Vogue June 1974)

Von Furstenberg opened her first store on Madison Avenue with a $30,000 loan from her father in 1970, creating T-shirt dresses, but it wasn’t until she created her wrap dress that she struck gold. Von Furstenberg first made a wrap top inspired by ballerinas, which she would pair with pants or a skirt. It was successful. Von Furstenberg didn’t want to become a designer, but fell into this world while working as a secretary for the agent of photographers, including Helmut Newton.

Through her job, she met an Italian man who invited her to his factory in Como in the early ‘70s. “He really wanted to sleep with me. That’s the real story,” von Furstenberg tells me. “But he invited me to come to his factory and watch what he did, and that’s what I did.” The factory produced old hosiery, which went out of fashion when pantyhose hit the scene. The factory owner didn’t know what to do with the old machines, but figured out how to make a specific jersey with them. The original DVF jersey offers an incredible sensation, like you are wearing water.

Von Furstenberg went back and forth. At first, she created wrap top pant and skirt sets from the jersey, which were successful. But it wasn’t until the Watergate scandal in 1972 that she saw Julie Nixon Eisenhower, defending her father, former President Nixon, on television, wearing her skirt and wrap top, that she thought about combining the two. The wrap dress was born in 1974.

At one point, von Furstenberg produced 25,000 wrap dresses per week. “I used to say, ‘I have 50,000 sleeves,” she says. The designer was jetting around the country to stores in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. Her trick was personal appearances. “Coming to stores and feeling confident because everyone was so nice and welcoming…I would go around and dress these women, and they were just so happy. And it was amazing. Yes, I made the wrap dress, but the wrap dress made me,” she says. “There is not a city I haven’t gone to.” Funny enough, a week later, I go to DVF headquarters in Meatpacking, where I see her meeting with customers and showing them the pieces.

Oversaturation Leads to Experimentation:

The magazine cover-making wrap dress and sold and sold until it wasn’t in the late ‘70s. What are you going to do when you see every woman walking down the street in a wrap dress? The market was flooded, and Diane was in trouble. Debt, overstock. Von Furstenberg disappeared for a handful of years in Europe. The dress went out of production in 1984. She claims that she got cancer at the base of her tongue because of the “inability to express herself.”

QVC in 1993

From a Vogue piece written by Katherine Betts

It was the home-shopping channel QVC (Quality, Value, Convenience) that helped von Furstenberg return to the fashion industry. The channel is cheeky, featuring hosts selling items to viewers in their living rooms. But this campy sales method made sense for von Furstenberg, who dedicated a good amount of time in the ‘70s personally showing up at far-flung department stores to sell wrap dresses to customers.

A still via the DVF team

On QVC, von Furstenberg launched sets of silk pieces in a collection called “Silk Assets.” She did extremely well, selling $98,000 in 60 seconds.

The Late ‘90s Revival

The 20-year trend cycle has never felt more true than for someone like DVF, who experienced a major revival in the late ‘90s, as young women began exploring their mothers’ closets. In a 1997 piece, the late New York Times writer Amy Spindler noted that DVF’s daughter-in-law, Alexandra von Furstenberg, ran in a cool circle of girls that included Tocca’s founder, Marie-Anne Oudejans. This cool group of girls snapping up vintage wrap dresses was embedded PR exposure.

DVF campaign (1998)

The ‘90s version of the wrap dress did receive some design updates: a new silk jersey, knee-length, and smaller lapels.

A piece by Amy Spindler in The New York Times (1997)

Moments from Diane and the Archive…

Diane Tells Me About Her Beauty Routine

DVF Wants Me To Change My Substack Name?

Should I…do it? Diane drew this new logo idea on her stationery.

Diane and I debated the name of my Substack both at her home and later at her office. She doesn’t like the name NEVERWORNS because it has an inherent negative connotation. She was confused by the name, especially because the wrap dress is an “always worn.” She told me to change it and gave me a new logo design. Honestly, I feel like Diane, the master of marketing, has a point.

Prints

Asking DVF how many prints she has made is like asking how much sand is at the beach. The prints are genius. Bright. Beautiful. Busy. The most sassy look I try is a leopard-print wrap top and pant set from the ‘70s. “The movement of the prints, which is like nature. If you look at anything in nature, it always has a movement. The movement is flattering,” says Diane. “Nature is everything. The two things that inspire me are women and nature. Everything I do is either women or nature.”

Wrapping the Wrap Dress

I hate bows, and maybe Diane does, too? When she wraps my dress, she flips the tie under the waist twice.

Photographs

I’ve never met anyone with so many photographs of their family. The surface of her desk at the DVF HQ in Meatpacking is covered with family photos. It is sweet.

On Women Designers

“Christian Louboutin once told me, ‘Men designers make costume. Women designers make clothes.” I said, “What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Well, look at, for example, jersey. All women designers from Chanel, Donna Karan, Norma Kamali, Madame Gres, Sonia Rykiel, DVF…everyone uses jersey, which men hate.’” Diane later tells me, “I will never ever make a dress that’s not comfortable that you can’t have a body language.”

The Diary

Diane has a zillion diaries in her house. She gave me a diary that I started using. It’s extremely liberating to write as little and as much as I want. “I kept everything. I tell everybody to keep a diary. Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up and I wrote three lines in my diary.” I ask if she remembers what she wrote. “I don’t remember what I wrote.” You know what? Fair!

She goes on to tell me how the diary relates to oneself. “The most important thing is the dialogue with yourself. The most important thing is the relationship you have with you, and once you have that, any other relationship is a plus and not a must. And the one thing you can’t be is needy. And also, you can never lie.”

Diane tells me that she is “unblackmailable” because she has never lied. I believe her. After all, Diane’s autobiography The Woman I Wanted to Be leaves no stone unturned…it’s truly vivid. But that’s because Diane is vivid.