The story of one brand: Diane von Furstenberg
IN THE LIGHT THERE IS A GREAT GRADEthat we love from and to - with all their ups and downs. We hunt for their stuff, ready to buy all the rail on the sale and look forward to showing new collections. It's time to figure out what the phenomenon of their attractiveness. This week we are talking about the creator of the revolutionary dress with the smell, which this year celebrates the anniversary in honor of the 40th anniversary since the launch of the dress in mass production. Dressing gown at one time glorified the name of the designer and combined comfort and sexuality, becoming a symbol of the female revolution.
Diana Halfin was born in Brussels in 1946 into a Jewish family that survived Auschwitz. She received education (economics) in Geneva and in the same place in 1967 at a party in the club "Griffin" met her future husband, Prince Egon von Furstenberg, from whom Diana discovered New York and other glorious life. However, immediately after the wedding did not lose time and took up a career. Her first position was the position of assistant photographer, and then work at the Italian textile factory Ferretti: it was there that, having no special education and experience in the fashion industry, she began to sew the first things. Then Diana moves to Paris, and then, in 1969, to New York, where she immediately enters the main party of that time that formed around Andy Warhol: a few years later, the genius of pop art will make her portrait.
In 1970, after meeting Diana Vreeland, who refused to Fürstenberg as an assistant, but supported her idea of continuing to engage in design, Fürstenberg founded a brand name and gave her first show at the Gotham Hotel in New York. On her first show, the it star of the 70s generation and the "factory girl" Jane Fort walk as a model.
Diana invented the legendary feminine jersey dress with colored geometric patterns in 1972, attaching a label with a slogan "Feel like a woman - put on a dress" on each dress. The simplicity and genius of the idea (easy to put on - easy to take off) produce a sensation: the dressing gown is distributed by millions of copies among women who wanted to abandon the hippie tunic to the floor, and the dress becomes a typical dress of the mid-70s women, usually in combination with suede boots.
However, Diana was not a pioneer. The first to offer women the dress with the smell, Claire McCardel was in 1942 - and this, too, was a revolutionary event in American fashion. Claire's dress was a bestseller and was produced until the mid 60s. In the late 60s, Betsy Johnson invented her own version of the dress with a smell: her dress decorated the windows of one of the main New York stores of that time - Madison Avenue Paraphernalia. But, apparently, all these were false starts: it was not they who entered the story, but the dress with the smell invented by Diana. Von Furstenberg made the design of the belt and smell even easier, and the neckline - deeper. Due to the design, the dress is removed in half a second, and the way from work to sex becomes much shorter. The dress with a smell becomes a symbol of developing ideas of feminism, a symbol of the whole generation of women. The dress personifies sexual freedom and feminine power and becomes the historical heritage of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. In a 1977 article entitled “The Influence of Feminism on Fashion”, critic Kerry Donovan writes that “instils courage and self-confidence in women not to be afraid to show their individuality and sexuality, the dressing gown Furstenberg changed the very relationship between women and clothes. Now, clothes do not and paints a woman, and a woman paints. "
1975 Vogue announces "The Year of the Wrap Dress" ("The year of the Wrap!") Because after Diana, Halston also shows his version of the dress. Thanks to them, a dress with a smell can be seen in every supermarket and at every party in Studio 54. A year later, Diana gets on the cover of Newsweek, where her contribution to fashion is compared to Coco Chanel. In an interview with Vogue, the 30-year-old designer clearly formulates the formula for success: "Simplicity plus sexuality for reasonable money is what people want." Diana sought this all her life. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Diana said that in childhood she had no idea who she wanted to become and what to do. Her only clear plan was to become an independent woman who drives a car and pays her bills. That, however, did not prevent her from associating her life with the rich and famous: having diverged at the peak of fame with her first husband, she meets the American billionaire Barry Diller, and by the 80th she sells her company and loses control over the brand.
In the 90s, the longing for dressing gowns comes to the point that a real hunt begins for vintage 70s Diane von Furstenberg dresses. The designer understands that it is time to return to business: in 1997, Diana revives the brand and signs a multimillion-dollar contract with Saks Fifth Avenue to re-issue dressing gowns. So the dress triumphantly returns to fashion. In 2001, Diana formalized her relationship with Barry Diller and received US citizenship, and in 2005 she became president of the prestigious American organization in the fashion world - the American Council of Fashion Designers (CFDA).
This year, the brand celebrates the 40th anniversary of the dress with the smell: in honor of such a date in Los Angeles opened the exhibition "Diane von Furstenberg: Journey of a Dress". However, the 67-year-old von Furstenberg does not simply skim the cream from her long-time invention and flaunts her personal reality show on the American entertainment channel E !. Yes, models in dresses with the smell still open shows of her collections, but in addition to them, the designer releases a full set of women's clothing and accessories, personalized perfumes, and in 2010 launches a line of sunglasses. As she said ironically in an interview with The Guardian, “I'm old enough to remember how we danced in“ Studio 54, and young enough to make the first designer collaboration with Google Glass ”. And this is not a joke - Diana shoots a display and a backstage of her spring-summer 2013 collection on Google Glass, and after that she makes a designer collection of frames for Google Glass (you can buy them on Net-A-Porter). And we can understand the choice of Google: Diane von Furstenberg is a great example of how a brand with an impressive past fits perfectly into the present and the future.