Vogue Festival: DVF Becomes Her Own Woman
The first-ever Vogue Fashion Festival in London kicked off this past weekend with makeovers, fashion shoots and films, plus live talks with some of fashion’s biggest names such as Stella McCartney, Christopher Bailey, Natalia Vodianova, Pixie Geldof and Alexandra Shulman, among others. Couldn’t attend? Muuse’s Sophia attended the Vogue Fest to bring you the event highlights:
Diane Von Furstenberg at the 2012 Vogue Festival
The Belgian-born Diane Von Furstenberg never imagined that she would one day commandeer a fashion empire, serving as a role model to aspiring designers and women alike. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I did know who I wanted to be,” said Furstenberg. She recapitulated for the audience how she became an overnight success of the wrap dress, how her business floundered, and how she rebuilt her business up again as what she called the “comeback kid.” Furstenberg – president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America – flew in expressly from New York to deliver the following inspiring words and anecdotes:
On who she wanted to be: “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew who I wanted to be. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to have my own money and be able to stand on my own.”
Her start in the fashion industry: “At night when the factory [in Como, Italy] was closed, I would stay in with the pattern maker. And we would make a few dresses from whatever [fabric] I found on the floor, whatever we found anywhere.”
Furstenberg models the first-ever wrap dress in 1972
Arriving to New York and meeting Diana Vreeland: “All of a sudden walks in this woman with black hair, red nail polish, red lipstick and a long cigarette holder. And the first thing she does is she lifts up my chin and says: ‘Chin – up, up, up!’ And I thought, ‘Oh, this is not starting well at all.’”
The birth of the wrap dress: “There was this little wrap top – almost like a dancer top. And one day I looked at it and thought, ‘I should attach this thing to a skirt and turn it into a dress.’”
On the wrap dress craze: “Then, it just went crazy. From my tiny quantities of nothing, I started to make 25,000 dresses a week – that is 50,000 sleeves.”
Then & Now: DVF. Courtesy of butterboom.com
Perks of being a designer: “I established this incredible dialog with women. I didn’t want to give that up.”
Return to a failed business: “My brand was a mess. It had deteriorated. It didn’t mean anything. It was all over the place… It was really, really bad…. And I actually, I had a really hard time for a number of years.”
The future as the ‘comeback kid’: “I hired a new creative director Yvan Mispelaere… He comes with his very strong fashion background. And of course, I come as a woman, always making sure how practical it [the designs] be and how effortless it be, and about all these secrets only us women know.”
Advice to the audience: “Be the woman you want to be.”
