"last night at the airport with Condoleezza Rice..." DVF
http://www.miaminicemag.com/images/easyblog_images/508/DSCF8973.JPG
design Miami brought together two minds that are really too fashionable to fit on a tiny white stage in the middle of a busy hallway - Diane Von Furstenberg, DVF herself, and Stefano Tonchi, editor of W Magazine. On Wednesday afternoon, around three o'clock, Diane Von Furstenberg, the inventor of the wrap-dress, the "uniform of the independent woman," sat across from Stefano Tonchi, who's fully revitalized W Magazine into my current favorite publication (and the best vacation inspiration you can find - Instanbul! Corsica!) - and confessed she goes around counting how many wrap dresses there are in any given room. About eighty between the airport and her walk around the Basel fair.
The wrap dress, and the legacy of DVF is something of a tremendous magnitude not just on American fashion (while she speaks with a mixed European accent, DVF is markedly an American designer and the head of the CFDA the Council of Fashion Designers of America) but on commercial branding, the history of dress and more. Her wrap dress is in the Smithsonian Collection as of the 70's and was worn by Michelle Obama on her first Christmas card as a first lady. Today, she's the mentor to Alexander Wang (a Chinese-born-American-designer just named the head of Balenciaga), is addicted to technology, counts her Chinese Twitter followers, and had four grandchildren and an Evian bottle in her honor.
I anticipated that DVF would be cool, that she would be interesting and say things that made me think "no wonder she's a fashion icon!", but I didn't anticipate she would be
funny
- and she was. She talked about how she stumbled into fashion as a knocked up fiance of a very, very rich older man who owned a factory that made hose and "This man had a Maserati. He drove like any Italian, like a mad person." She tells long, off-subject, but very interesting stories and then remembers his question and finally answers it in one or two sentences. She talked about the wrap-dress as a kind of feline creation "When a woman feels like an animal, good things happen," she says, with a smirk and a wink. She says things like "last night I was in the airport lounge with Condoleezza Rice" and she remains humble.
DVF is very nice. Oh, and she told us she bought something at Basel.
personal photos from Diane's travels:
stefano tonchi and diane von furstenberg:
when you have water names after you, you've made it:
