Diane von Furstenberg

Diane von Furstenberg started on her career as a designer as a way to keep herself from becoming subsumed into her husband’s identity as a European prince. She didn’t want to be a useless princess, so she launched a new business and through that, she became an icon of the design world with the simple design of one dress. The stunning popularity of her collection was in large part due to the rise of women in power, and of their self-awareness of that power in the workplace. Diane’s designs spoke to that feminine freedom.

The jersey sport wrap dress Diane launched into the fashion world was not strictly an original design; certainly there had been wrap dresses, and sport dresses before. What made hers rocket to the sale of more than five million dresses in a matter of a few years was the sexy appeal of wearing a dress to women who had been trying to dress more masculine thinking it would get them ahead in the workplace. Diane’s design brought beauty to the souls of working women everywhere, and the jersey material it was made of was washable as well. It was a winning combination of fashion and practicality.

That dress became such an icon that one now is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it has come back into styles. By the end of the decade, Diane had sold her business and moved on to other interests, although she would return to the industry twenty years later. In the later 70’s, she wrote a self help book based on her life and like her designs, it exhorted women to” become a more attractive, confident, and sensual woman”. Like Diane herself, her designs gave millions of women the freedom to not only be smart and strong, but sexy and practical. She had started the business on an impulse as a young girl who refused to disappear into the woodwork, and dressed in her designs, a legion of young women entered the workforce following that sentiment. She gave women everywhere the way to feel like exactly what they were, and to dress like a woman at the same time.