Diane Von Furstenberg’s friends like to tease that, had she been on the cinematic Titanic ship, she would have found a way to hoist up Jack from the freezing water onto that wooden door. Three days later, Jack in tow, she would have sashayed into a New York dinner party wearing that 56-carat blue diamond necklace. The woman has a strong will.
I realised that the first time I met her in 1975, when I was a cub reporter at The Washington Star . At 28, Von Furstenberg was already a sensation with the phenomenally successful US$86 (approximately RM404) wrap dress. On a visit to Washington to promote her brand, Von Furstenberg was in a rush to get to the airport and asked if I could come down to her car for the interview.
I felt as if I was climbing into a cage with a panther when I got into the back of a black limo. There she was in a dark mink coat, her long, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her legs sheathed in black fishnets. She was nibbling from a box of dark chocolates.
In her sultry Belgian accent, she offered me one. Her voice, as her late friend Andre Leon Talley of Vogue described, “wraps itself around you like a cozy, warm cashmere muffler”. That half-hour in her limo was a revelation.
In an era when we were instructed by male “experts” to dress and act like men to get ahead, Von Furstenberg insisted on living a man’s life in a woman’s body. Her message was bracing – meet men as equals, but don’t imitate them. Ambition and stilettos can coexist.
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