NEWS

Fashion mogul von Furstenberg tells women at Brown conference to share their voice, strength

Donita Naylor
dnaylor@providencejournal.com
Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, speaking at Brown University May 5th.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Diane von Fürstenberg, founder of a fashion empire based on the wrap dress, spoke to about 700 women Friday night at Brown University's "125 Years of Women at Brown" conference.

The designer, whose son and daughter graduated from Brown in the early '90s, was the first half of the night's celebrity program that ended with a performance by singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter, who graduated from Brown in 1981 and was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree in 1996.

Von Fürstenberg told her story, how her mother gave birth to her a year after being liberated from Auschwitz weighing 49 pounds. Applause interrupted the fashion designer often, like when she told of her early ambition to be independent and in charge of her life, with a career like that of a man.

She married Egon von Fürstenberg, a German prince, in 1969, and they had two children by February 1971.

"Usually when you marry the prince in the fairy tales, it's the end, but for me, it was the beginning," she said. "We separated very early, but we stayed good friends." She and the children lived in New York City, where she had arrived with a suitcase full of samples. By 1976, she was producing 25,000 dresses a week. ("That's 50,000 sleeves, she said, to laughter.)

She remembers being the only woman on an early business flight to Pittsburgh. She was looking at the Wall Street Journal, which had a story about her on the front page.

"Why does a girl like you read the Wall Street Journal?" the man next to her said. "I looked at him and thought, 'jerk.' I never told him, 'Here I am on the front page.' It was a point of such satisfaction for me not to tell him. But every time I make a speaking engagement, I tell that story."

Now 70 and with two grandchildren about to enter college, she spoke of ups and downs, discovering that she was a has-been, fighting cancer, reigniting her brand. She didn't mention that she had an estimated net worth last summer of $340 million without the estimated $3 billion fortune of her second husband, media and Expedia mogul Barry Diller.

She only said that after she turned 50 and returned from a few years in Paris, she bought a carriage house in Manhattan, "changed the neighborhood, made the High Line." (She and Diller donated $20 million to build the elevated High Line park in Manhattan and $113 million for a nearby floating park and performance space on the Hudson that is expected to be completed in 2019.)

Her advice to women in their middle years is: "Try to find something that you stand for, that you become mythical for," even if it's as humble as making apricot jam.

Every woman is strong, she said, and every woman has a voice. She thinks women should "take these voices and weave them into a fabric that will have impact to people who have no voice."

— dnaylor@providencejournal.com

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