- Company
- DVF
- Role
- Founder & Chairwoman
- Est. Net Worth
- $1.2 Billion (Est.)
- Stage
- Elite
- Industry
- Retail
Diane von Fürstenberg
Founder & Chairwoman at DVF
About
Diane von Fürstenberg revolutionized women's fashion with the invention of the wrap dress in 1974 — a single garment that became a symbol of female liberation, professional empowerment, and accessible elegance. Born in Brussels and educated in Switzerland, von Fürstenberg moved to New York and built her namesake brand into a global fashion empire that has dressed everyone from working women to first ladies. The wrap dress, which she designed to be flattering on every body type and easy to wear without assistance, sold over five million units in its first two years and has remained in continuous production for five decades. Beyond fashion, she served as president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America for thirteen years and has been a vocal advocate for women's rights, entrepreneurship, and creative independence. Her DVF Awards annually recognize women who have shown leadership, strength, and courage in their communities.
Current Company
DVF — Founder & Chairwoman
The Dress That Changed Everything
Diane von Fürstenberg's wrap dress — introduced in 1974 and still in production five decades later — is one of the very few garments in fashion history that can credibly claim to have changed the culture. The dress was simple in concept: a jersey knit fabric that wrapped around the body and tied at the waist, requiring no zippers, buttons, or assistance to put on. But its cultural impact was anything but simple. The wrap dress arrived at precisely the moment when millions of women were entering the professional workforce for the first time, and it offered them something that no other garment did: a way to look polished, feminine, and powerful without the rigid formality of a suit or the impracticality of couture. It was, as von Fürstenberg herself described it, the dress you could throw on and feel like a woman — confident, independent, and in control.
The commercial success was extraordinary: von Fürstenberg sold over five million wrap dresses in the first two years, and her face appeared on the cover of Newsweek under the headline 'The Most Marketable Woman Since Coco Chanel.' But what distinguished the wrap dress from other fashion phenomena was its longevity. While most fashion trends burn bright and disappear, the wrap dress has remained a staple of women's wardrobes for fifty years — reissued, reinterpreted, and reimagined in new fabrics and prints each season, but always recognizable as the same fundamental garment. This durability reflects the dress's essential genius: it solved a real problem (how to dress professionally and attractively with ease) rather than simply capturing a moment's aesthetic fancy.
Power, Fashion, and the Advocacy of Women's Independence
Von Fürstenberg's influence extends far beyond her signature garment. As president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 2006 to 2019, she was the most powerful advocate for American fashion designers, championing emerging talent, fighting for intellectual property protections, and using her platform to argue that fashion is a legitimate creative and economic force deserving of the same institutional support given to other cultural industries. Under her leadership, CFDA expanded its mentorship programs, launched new initiatives supporting diverse designers, and raised the profile of American fashion on the global stage.
Her personal story — born in Brussels to a Holocaust survivor mother, married to a German prince, divorced, built and lost and rebuilt her fortune, survived cancer — has made her a symbol of female resilience and reinvention. The DVF Awards, which she established in 2010, annually honor women who have demonstrated leadership, strength, and courage in transforming their communities. Von Fürstenberg's advocacy for women's empowerment is not an add-on to her business but its animating philosophy: the wrap dress was always more than a garment — it was a declaration that women could dress themselves, define themselves, and build their own lives on their own terms. Now in her late seventies, she continues to oversee the brand and to speak publicly about the connection between fashion, identity, and female power.