Von Furstenberg still dresses for success

Lisa Ferguson

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | 10:07 a.m.

Like bell bottoms and halter tops, it's Diane Von Furstenberg's turn in fashion's spotlight again.

The designer, who introduced to the world her "wrap dress," of which she sold more than five million in the 1970s, is basking in the dress' renewed popularity more than 20 years later.

"All of a sudden, it's become a hip thing," Von Furstenberg says. "My dresses are now worn and sold in the hippest stores, and it's so unexpected."

She's also making a statement on the literary front. Having written a trio of coffee table books earlier this decade, Von Furstenberg recently penned her memoir "Diane: A Signature Life" (Simon & Schuster, $25), co-authored by Linda Bird Francke.

Although she completed a tour promoting the book, Von Furstenberg will be at the Bellagio hotel-casino Thursday signing copies for an invitation-only crowd at a luncheon sponsored by the local community office of the Anti-Defamation League.

"She is a woman who was basically part of a cultural revolution of women," Jason Skoboloff, community director of the local ADL office, says. "She invented the wrap dress at a time when women were entering the workforce, and that played a big part in womens' issues."

In the book, the 52-year-old designer traces her much-publicized, glamourous life. She married a German prince, and by age 26 was a single mother of two, making her way in the fashion world. At 29, she and her dress graced the cover of Newsweek.

Since then, she's been linked romantically to such celebrities as Ryan O'Neal and Richard Gere, and has experienced a tumultuous ride in the business world, including nearly going bankrupt.

"The business side of things is always somewhat difficult," she says. As things change, "you try to continue to adapt to things, which is also something that is so clear in the book with me ... you constantly have to reinvent yourself.

"What has been extraordinary now to me in the last year or so is to see the people who are now reacting to me and to my clothes ... are so young. Even (with) the book, it's the younger generation who just love it and that, to me, is extremely inspirational and complimentary, the fact that people the age of my children are the ones who are the most interested, and who I have become some kind of mentor to."

With things seemingly on the upswing again, Von Furstenberg says she decided to write the book "because ... as I started my business again after I was so successful so young, and then I lost control and then I gained control again ... I thought it would be helpful to me and to everyone to just tell the story in my own words, and that's what I do."

That she is appearing here on behalf of the ADL, which promotes civil rights and fights anti-Semitism, prejudice and bigotry, is fitting: Von Furstenberg is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

In 1980, while being honored "for something" by the ADL, Von Furstenberg came to what she calls "a major turning point in my life," which she also addresses in the book.

"At the time, they didn't know that I was the daughter of a survivor, and when I accepted the award, I heard myself say something that I hadn't even thought about. I said, 'Many of you people know my dresses, but what not many people know is that 18 months before I was born, my mother was in the concentration camp.'

"My mother never really talked about it, and when she did talk about it, she always talked about it in a very positive way," she says, "about the good friends she made and all these other kinds of things. I didn't realize how much of an effect it (had) on me."

Von Furstenberg contends that her life is "a miracle" because her mother, who was 21 years old and weighed merely 49 pounds while in the concentration camp, was told that she could not have children. "And, nine months later, I was born. So my life was a miracle from day one, and somehow I carry that over."

Citing her "enormous resiliency," Von Furstenberg says, "I refuse to see the negative and I immediately turn it into a positive."

Such was the case with her battle with cancer four years ago, from which she says she has recovered. "You go from saying, 'I'm 46. How old,' and the next day you say, 'but I'm only 46,' and that changes your life again.

"Now I'm in my 50s and I've started all over again. ... All of a sudden everyone around me is younger than me, and (her designs) cater to the younger market, and they all think I'm the hottest thing around and I think it's divine."

Her spring line this year will feature long skirts, knit pants and, of course, the wrap dress, among others, featuring tangled web, dragonfly and Tibetan calligraphy prints.

But will fashion fans warm to the idea of the designer being a grandmother? (Von Furstenberg's daughter-in-law, Alexandra, who is also the creative director of her company, is expecting a child later this year.)

"I want to be Auntie Mame," she says. "That's what I want to be."