FASHION

48 | may 2011

NYO

W hen Diane von Furstenberg published her autobiography Diane: A Signature Life in 1998, I rushed out to get myself a copy and devoured it

overnight. I did not grow up with her wrap dress—although now I do own one in her vintage reprint—but I was drawn to her free spirit, which travels between the old countries and the new world, between fashion and art. But little did I ever expect that someday I would interview her in China.

For von Furstenberg, China was not a surprising destina-tion. I caught up with her in the few hours counting down to the opening reception for her “Journey of a Dress” exhibi-tion that opened at Pace Beijing in Beijing’s trendy 798 Art District on April 2. The exhibit, which highlights the 40-plus years of von Furstenberg’s career, includes 80 pieces. The original wrap dress from 1973, photographs, letters and von Furstenberg’s art collection, including a Warhol, will all be on display through May 14.

In Shanghai, where I attended Pearl Lam’s dinner for von

Furstenberg’s family and friends and her black-tie Red Ball, I had plenty of opportunities to observe her in her interac-tions. Surrounded by her family members, including her only brother, Philippe, who flew in from Belgium, she spoke alternatively in French and in English, looking simultane-ously engaged and relaxed.

“China inspires me today in the same way that New York has inspired me,” she said. She went on to explain that when she first moved from Europe to America at the age of 22, she was drawn to America because it seemed anything was possible. She said she feels very much the same way about China today.

“Journey of a Dress” is a journey of an exhibition. It ends with China. The designer believed that the show would give the Chinese, who in the past four decades lived through a world very different from America, a window to an Ameri-can cultural history.

Born to a Russian-born father and a Greek-born mother >

Diane von Furstenberg on China, New York and her new exhibit at the Pace Gallery in Beijing.

By Chiu-Ti Jansen

F a S H I O N ’ S a R T m U S E

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May 2011 | PB

Diane von Furstenberg, 2010, by Hai Bo.

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FASHION

50 | may 2011

NYO

who was a Holocaust survivor, von Fursten-berg grew up in Belgium and moved to New York after she married the late Prince Egon von Furstenberg of Germany. Before she of-ficially became a princess, she vowed to retain her independence by having a career.

Despite no formal training in fashion design, she has an instinct for “mak[ing] life elegant and easy for women” and a good busi-ness acumen befitting for an economics major at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where she met Prince von Furstenberg. In 1973 she introduced the iconic wrap dress. By 1976, five million dresses had been sold, land-ing her on the cover of Newsweek.

In 1985, she moved to Paris, where she started the French publishing house Salvy. She returned to America in the early ’90s, finding herself a stranger again to New York. She reintroduced the wrap dress in 1997, writing her own comeback story. When von Furstenberg first set up her design studio and showroom in the then backwater meatpack-ing district in the late ’90s, she led the pack of

fashion designers who eventually migrated downtown. She told me that she was often asked if she would have thought about ending up in China. Growing up in Europe, she was always fascinated with China: from the The Adventures of Tintin, a series of comic strips known as a quintessential story about China— to 18th-century chinoiserie aesthetics to the Cultural Revolution.

The retrospective at Pace Beijing was a well-timed branding strategy for von Furst-enberg’s dream of “selling every Chinese a T-shirt.” Currently, her DVF brand operates two boutiques in Beijing and Shanghai. Before the brand announces a major nationwide rollout, von Furstenberg would be building on her celebrity draw to create a following among the seasoned buyers in Beijing and Shanghai. >

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DVF danced at the Pace Beijing opening after-party.

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Diane von Furstenberg, 1974, by Andy Warhol.

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Fashion

52 | may 2011

NYO

The wrap dress is, physically and meta-phorically, a journey for von Furstenberg. The garment itself is an embodiment of freedom— free from a zipper, buttons, iron and the dictate of a ’70s feminist bow-tie pant suit. The wrap dress means freedom to feel like a woman. I asked the designer why freedom was so important to her.

“Maybe it came from my mother—when she was 20 she was a prisoner [at a concentra-tion camp] in Germany. She was reduced to nothing. It was a miracle that she survived. I was a miracle that was born 18 months later. My pursuit of freedom, strength and inde-pendence and [my determination to] never be a victim very much came from my mother’s experience.”

While celebrating women’s confidence and independence, she did not subscribe to a she-man version of womanhood. “Feel like a woman, wear a dress”—the slogan that von Furstenberg has made popular—was a

breakthrough of the false dichotomy between he and she and between career track and sex appeal. She taught women that it was possible to be sexy and powerful at the same time.

Von Furstenberg was one of the first fash-ion designers who significantly intersected with the world of contemporary art. Andy Warhol painted her in both the ’70s and the ’80s. Francesco Clemente painted a portrait the day she first became a grandmother. The Beijing show has incorporated new artworks that did not exist in its previous incarnations in Russia and Brazil. She re-cently posed for Hai Bo’s photographic por-trait in the artist’s studio in the outskirts of Beijing. She also sat for Chuck Close in his New York studio, who took a picture of her swollen face and bruised cheekbones right after a bad skiing accident.

“The last thing I would want to do [after the accident] was to be photographed. But it came out great,” she told me.

Zhang Huan created three ash paintings, applying ashes collected from Buddhist temples in Shanghai to canvases of an American flag, a Chinese flag and a portrait of von Furstenberg inspired by fashion photog-rapher Peter Lindbergh’s photograph of her for the October 2009 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. Li Songsong’s thick impasto portrait of her was based on a photograph that appeared on the cover of Interview magazine in March 1977. (She did not sit for Zhang and Li.) In the artistic renderings as well as in real life, she was glamorous, but with a European noncha-lance and bohemian flair that reminded me of a Parisian artist. There was no trace of a plastic beauty from Hollywood.

There could be no better example of how art and fashion intersect than through the lens of von Furstenberg and her iconic designs, a fact she is well aware of.

“Art is a reflection of our time,” she said. “Fashion is a reflection of our time.” o

DVF with her wrap dresses prior to her Pace Beijing retrospective opening.

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