Diane von Furstenberg: I’m looking for my ‘mini-me’

SINGAPORE — It is a busy time for fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. Earlier this year, she marked the 40th anniversary of her iconic wrap dress with an exhibition in Los Angeles. Next week, she releases her new memoir, The Woman I Wanted To Be, which begins with the story of her mother, a Holocaust survivor.

And next month, her new television docu-series, House Of DVF, premieres on E!. The show sees eight young girls vying to be the fashion house’s new global brand ambassador.

Von Furstenberg is not an unfamiliar face to television — she has appeared as a judge several times on Project Runway and also in the MTV reality series The City — but for the first time, she will be headlining her own show.

For years, von Furstenberg said, she had been approached to do similar projects but always turned them down “because I didn’t like it and I didn’t understand why I should”. And even with House Of DVF, she prefers not to call it a reality show. “What I didn’t like about those shows is that they objectify the women — the bitch is the one who wins,” she said in a phone interview.

“Then one day I decided, with my marketing department, that I was going to look for young girls to become a brand ambassador. And then someone said, ‘That should be the TV show.’ But then I decided, if I do a TV show, it has to be a hundred per cent authentic. Nothing is scripted, nothing is fake.”

Based on that, viewers can assume that the show will give us an insight into the venerated designer’s working life. “For this job, you have to first understand the brand and like it. You have to know how to work under stress, be able to talk to people and to present yourself (well). You have to be able to travel to do interviews to represent the brand. You have to be like a mini-me,” von Furstenberg said.

And, “you know, we always joke that working in this company is like a sitcom anyway”.

In her opinion, is she an easy person to work with? “I don’t know if I’m easy. The fact that I love people to be themselves and that I allow them to laugh doesn’t mean that I am not serious, but as long as everybody takes seriously what they have to do and are comfortable doing what they do, then they can have a good time,” she said.

At 67, the Belgium-born mother of two and grandmother of four is comfortable even with the social media aspect of her job. “It’s very funny. Because I started very, very young and I did personal appearances and had a very, very open dialogue with my consumers, I feel that I have been doing social media even before social media existed,” she chuckled.

“I love taking pictures and doing Instagram. I always say that I was lucky to be old enough to dance at Studio 54 and young enough to be part of the digital revolution.”

But her colourful and successful life would certainly not have been the same without that one pivotal dress. “Of course I can imagine life without the wrap dress, but the wrap dress has changed my life,” she said. “It has paid for my independence. It made me famous. It paid for my children’s education, my houses. And along the way it has transformed many other people because it gave a lot of women confidence. This year I celebrated its 40th anniversary. For years I took it for granted and after the exhibition in Los Angeles, I no longer take it for granted and I honour it. The wonderful thing about the wrap dress is that it has managed to be timeless.”

If she had to name another item of clothing she felt was equally timeless, it would be “a pair of jeans” – specifically, the 501’s from Levis – and “then you have the qipao. This year, I made a qipao wrap dress and it’s very successful, and it’s beautiful.”

At this stage in life, she hopes to share her years of experience with young women, because “we all remember how it was at the beginning of our lives, when you have so many doors in front of you”.

“I love young girls and I love to mentor young girls at the beginning of their lives,” she said, adding that the prospective protegees on her show are aged between 19 and 25. “Yes, I can be tough, but I really care about these girls.”

And, if you’re hoping to catch one of her pearls of wisdom: “The most important advice I can give anybody is that the most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself. If you have that, then every other relationship is a plus and not a must. Everybody can do it. It’s just a matter of working at it — by being true to yourself, by seeing all the things that you should do that you’re not doing. It’s not something that happens overnight. You have to practice it every day. To be true to yourself; to be demanding of yourself. If you are that, then you also see the good things about yourself.”

Catch House Of DVF starting Nov 4, Tuesdays at 10pm on E! (StarHub TV Ch 441).