Introduction
When I was a child, studying for my exams, I would pretend I was teaching imaginary students. It was my way to learn. Living is learning, and as I look back at the many layers of experience I collected, I feel ready to share some of the lessons I learned along the way. Living also means aging. The good thing about aging is that you have a past, a history. If you like your past and stand by it, then you know you have lived fully and learned from your life.
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Those were the lessons that allowed me to be the woman I am.
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As a girl, I did not know what I wanted to do but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be. I wanted to be my own person, independent and free. I knew that freedom could only be achieved if I took full responsibility for myself and my actions, if I were true to truth, if I became my very best friend.
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Life is not always a smooth ride. Landscapes change, people come in. and out, obstacles appear and disrupt the planned itinerary, but one thing you know for sure is that you will always have yourself.
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I have arranged this book into chapters on what has inspired me the most and continues to give me strength: family, love, beauty, and the business of fashion. But I must single out the person who was the most important in shaping my life, in making me the woman I wanted to be... my mother. That is where this memoir begins.
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*POI descriptions have been taken directly from the memoir (not my own words).
Change in information such as professions, relationship status etc. were also added on as I've gone through the book.
Names are listed in the order they were introduced in the book.
If you believe you have spotted any errors, please do let me know as this would have been unintentional and I'll gladly rectify the issue.
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Lily Nahmias
Philippe
Greta
Salvatore
Aunt Juliette
Dr. Josef Mengele
Leon Haffin
Moshe Nahmias
Great-Aunt Line
Mademoiselle Gilette
My mother, born in Salonika, Greece, in 1922. She was strict and distant. She was very much the boss of the house and I always saw her as the brains of the family. She was not a traditional housewife.
My younger brother. I think of him as my first child. He is a successful businessman in Brussels. He and his wife run DVF Belgium. We talk on the phone every weekend and whenever I miss my parents, I call him.
Philippe’s wife and mother of his two children; Sarah and Kelly.
My first cousin.
Salvatore's mother.
The notorious Angel of Death, who killed or mutilated many prisoners in medical experiments, especially children and twins.
My father, born in Kishinev, Moldova, in 1912. He was relaxed and affectionate. As a child I loved him much more than my demanding mother. He never scolded me. He simply adored me and I adored him. To my father I was the most beautiful thing in the world and I felt entitled to his love and devotion. He was a successful businessman, a distributor of General Electric electronic tubes and semiconductors. He did well, so we lived very comfortably. He was a hardworking, generous man, but he could be indifferent and sometimes verbally harsh.
My mother’s father, a Sephardic Jew, moved his family from Salonika to Brussels when my mother was seven and ran La Maison Dorée, the large department store owned by his brother-in-law, Simon Haim.
My maternal grandmother’s sister, who was married to the wealthy Simon Haim.
My mother’s and I headmistress at Lycée Dachsbeck school in Brussels. She had ignored the racial laws of the Nazi occupation and allowed my mother to graduate from high school. It is probably why she chose me to blow out the candles on the cake at the school’s seventy-fifth anniversary in 1952.
Hans Muller
He was a very handsome young Swiss German businessman who worked in the fruit business. Separated from his wife, he lived with his small son, Martin, who was the same age as my brother, Philippe. He and my mother developed a friendship, which eventually led to a secret love affair and later to a long relationship.
Prince Alexandre Egon
My son. He is an exceptional father, lover of life, and brilliant businessman and asset manager.
Princess Tatiana Desiree von und zu Furstenberg
My daughter. She was diagnosed with myotonia in her twenties; a genetic muscular disorder that delays the muscles from relaxing after any exercise, especially in cold weather. In 2014, she learned she doesn’t have myotonia, but rather Brody disease, also a genetic condition that affects the muscles, including the muscle of the heart. She is a wonderful mother, a certified teacher and therapist, and a successful screenwriter and director. Her first feature film, Tanner Hall, which she cowrote, directed, and produced with her friend Francesca Gregorini, was the winner of the 2011 GENART Film Festival Audience Award.
Talita
The daughter of Alexandre and his then wife, Alexandra Miller. She is beautiful and very bright, a great debater, a talented painter, and has an old soul.
Tassilo
Clara Agnelli Nuvoletti
Giovanni Nuvoletti
Antonia
The son of Alexandre and his then wife, Alexandra Miller. He is named after Egon’s father, Prince Tassilo Egon Maximilian.
Egon’s mother, the eldest child of the Fiat motorcar family.
Clara’s second husband and the president of the culinary academy of Italy.
Tatiana’s daughter. I think of her as a militant in the family, the political person, an A student, compassionate, a good painter, a born performer, and an amazing musician.
Leon
Alexandre’s third child and his first with Alison Kay. He was named after my father.
Olivier Gelbsmann
My closest, oldest friend who has known me since I was eighteen. He later became an interior decorator and we now work together on DVF décor and home products. He was friends with my mother, my daughter, and now my granddaughters.
Prince Eduard Egon von und zu Fürstenberg
My first husband and the father of Alexandre and Tatiana. He gave me my children; he gave me his name; he gave me his trust and his encouragement as he believed in me; he shared everything, all of his knowledge and all of his connections as he gave me his love. I met Egon at a birthday party in Lausanne, we were both nineteen. He was the perfect eligible bachelor, an Austro/German prince by his father, and a rich heir from his mother, Clara Agnelli. It was his helplessness that seduced me. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. He had hepatitis C for a while. He had led a life of excess until his health finally failed him.
Jas Gawronski
An Italian newsman of Polish origins who reported from New York every night on Italian television. He was very handsome and, best friend of Egon’s uncle Gianni Agnelli. My friendship and love affair with Jas gave me the assurance I craved after the separation from Egon. Our affair was secret at first. Jas was well educated and very kind. He was married but lived apart from his wife. He did not want to commit; nor did I, really. It was a healing period, pleasant and light.
Barry Diller
He was the very young chairman of Paramount Pictures. He was to love me unconditionally, guessing my desires and needs and always impressing me with his unquestioning trust. Barry spoiled us. For my twenty-ninth birthday, he took me to a party at Woody Allen’s where he gave me twenty-nine loose diamonds in a Band-Aid box.
Angelo Ferretti
The flamboyant industrial fashion tycoon who invited me to come to Como, visit his factories, and learn about his business. He owned two factories in Pare, near Como, Italy; one, a printing plant where he printed intricate colourful scarves for Ferragamo, Gucci, and other large companies; the other, next door, where he produced knitted silk and high-quality mercerized cotton jersey fabric for shirts and T-shirts. He was very much an Italian man: handsome, a serious gambler, a bit of a flirt, and great fun.
Diana Vreeland
The intimidating, all-powerful dragon lady editor in chief of Vogue. It was Diana who first understood and appreciated the simple uniqueness of the jersey fabric and the easy, flattering fit of the dresses.
Bob Loeb
A beauty business consultant, who helped me develop my first scent, a light, lovely fragrance named Tatiana after my four-year-old daughter.
People of Interest
Quotes
My mother did not believe in coddling children too much or over-protecting them. She wanted me to be independent and responsible for myself.
I am the daughter of a woman who went to the concentration camps with a smile.
I always, always wanted to be older than my age. I never wanted to be a little girl. I wanted to be a woman, a sophisticated woman, a glamorous woman. I wanted to be important.
How lucky I was that this first man in my life loved me uncritically, unguardedly, without judging. I did not have to work for his love, I did not have to please him; his approval required no effort. That made an important impact on my life, and though I didn’t know it then, I now know it has made my relationships with men much easier. What I owe my father, and what I am so thankful for, is how comfortable I always feel with men. He gave me confidence.
The biggest gift my father gave me was not to be needy. I had so much love from him that I didn’t really need any more.
How could you possibly better yourself if you didn’t face your challenges up front or if you laid your problems off on someone or something else and didn’t learn from them?
Don’t blame your parents, don’t blame your boyfriend, don’t blame the weather. Accept the reality, embrace the challenge, and deal with it. Be in charge of your own life. Turn negatives into positives and be proud to be a woman.
Love is life is love is life.
I have been in love many times, but I know now that being in love does not always mean you know how to love.
The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself.
You cannot have a good relationship with anyone, unless you first have it with yourself. Once you have that, any other relationship is a plus and not a must.
Once I love, I love forever, and there is nothing more cozy and meaningful than old friends and lovers.
Life was fun if you were young, pretty, and successful in the seventies.
I tailored my personality to merge with those of different men at different times in my life. I think most women consciously change their stripes or at least modify them in their relationships with men, especially during the delicious period of seduction. They become instant football lovers or sailing enthusiasts or political junkies, then taper back to their own personalities when the relationship is either cemented or over.
No one goes through life with one rigid personality. We are far more complex with various needs and desires that present themselves at different stages of our lives.
Being too beautiful as a child, I realized as I grew older, can be a curse. Counting too much on your appearance limits one’s growth. Looks are fleeting and cannot be your only asset.
Long, thin bodies are genetic, not engineered. Models watch what they eat, of course, but for the most part, their bodies are predisposed to be thin. This can be difficult for young girls to accept.
Use your brains, your common sense and do not become an object. The way you look is important, but who you are and how you project it is eventually who you will become and how you will appear.
I’m grateful I never thought of myself as beautiful when I was young. We all fade somewhat as time goes on. Women who relied only on their beauty can feel invisible later in life. It’s a pity, for I feel in the latter part of your life you should feel fulfilled, not defeated.
Your wrinkles reflect the roads you have taken; they form the map of your life.
Passion and persistence are what matter. Dreams are achievable and you can make your fantasy come true, but there are no shortcuts. Nothing happens without hard work.
By the end of 1975, production had escalated to over fifteen thousand dresses per week. Ferretti’s factory near Florence was working for us in full capacity. Over five years, I gave him $35 million in orders. All of this without a business plan, without any market analysis, without a focus group, without as publicist, without an advertising or branding agency. What I did have was a very good idea, a talented manufacturer who was passionate about his product, and an ambitious salesman who believed in me.
I loved having a man’s life in a woman’s body.
*Quotes have been taken directly from the memoir (not my own words).
No language or tenses have been changed.
Where context needed to be provided, these words have been highlighted in yellow.
If you believe you have spotted any errors, please do let me know as this would have been unintentional and I'll gladly rectify the issue.
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Timeline
1942
*Dates have been noted throughout the book.
Unless a name has been specified, actions noted refer to Diane's.
If you believe you have spotted any errors, please do let me know as this would have been unintentional and I'll gladly rectify the issue.
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August 6
Leon Halfin set off to escape the SS who were rounding up Jews in Belgium, to Switzerland, under the name Leon Desmedt.
August 8
Leon arrived at the Swiss border town of Damvant.
1944
May 17
Lily Nahmias is arrested by he Nazi SS for working in the Belgian Resistance. She was living in a ‘safe house’ and her job was to go around Brussels on her bicycle to deliver documents and fake papers to those who needed them.
May 19
Lily Nahmias is deported on the twenty-fifth transport, which left Malines. She was sent to Auschwitz and given prisoner number 5199.
1945
June
Lily Nahmias returned from Germany.
November 29
Lily Nahmias and Leon Halfin get married.
1946
December 31
I was born in Brussels.
1969
July 16
I married Egon in the countryside outside Paris, in Montfort l’Amaury. My three month pregnancy did not show at all in the Christian Dior wedding dress its designer Mark Bohan had created for me.
1970
January 25
Alexandre Egon was born in New York.
1971
February 16
Princess Tatiana Desiree von und zu Furstenberg was born, in New York.
April
I had just taken a showroom, my first, at the Gotham Hotel in New York.
1976
January 28
Wall Street Journal ran a feature about my ‘fashion empire’ on the front page.
March 22
I was on the cover of Newsweek.
1994
May 13
I was diagnosed with cancer.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis died of cancer.
2001
February 2
Barry and I got married on his fifty-ninth birthday at City Hall, New York.
2004
June 11
Egon died of Cirrhosis of the liver, two weeks before his fifty-eight birthday, in Rome.
2011
March 30
The Red Ball in Shanghai, China.
April 4
The exhibit of my work, life, and art opening day at Pace Beijing, China.
2014
January 10
My exhibition: Journey of a Dress opened in the old May Company department store building on the LACMA campus in Los Angeles.
Beware of your thoughts for they become words,
Beware of your words for they become actions,
Beware of your actions for they become habits,
Beware of your habits for they become character,
Beware of your character for it becomes your destiny.