My mother did not die peacefully. I think she was reliving the horrors of the camps and fighting giving in to death, as she had in Auschwitz. It was not the first time she’d relived those horrors. As much as she had tried to bury the past and concentrate on looking forward to life, she had had a breakdown twenty years before during a visit to Germany with Hans and some clients of his. My heart had nearly stopped when Hans called me in New York to tell me he’d woken up that morning in the hotel to find my mother missing. He’d finally found her hiding in the lobby of the hotel, underneath the concierge’s desk, disoriented, speaking loudly and making little sense. “Why? What happened?” I’d asked him, in a panic myself. He thought it must have been the dinner they’d had the night before with his clients at a restaurant. It was very hot and the people at the tables around her were speaking loudly in German. I suspected that she and Hans had also had a fight, but whatever the reason, she’d completely come apart.
Hans thought she might snap out of it if I talked to her and I tried to talk calmly to her over the phone, but all she could do was babble nonsensically. Hans drove her back to Switzerland and put her in the psychiatric ward of the hospital and we all flew to her side—my brother and I and even my father—but she remained very confused, laughing one minute, crying the next, raving and incoherent. She wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t drink nor would she surrender the fur coat she insisted on wearing in her hospital bed. We thought we’d lost her. But she was a survivor through and through, and three weeks later she was well enough to leave the hospital to convalesce in a clinic. She was a miracle once again, coming back to life from far away.
In her final illness in 2000, even though lovingly cared for by Lorna, her nurse, she no longer had the strength to fight off death or the demons that had always haunted her.
My brother, Philippe, and I buried her in Brussels, beside our father. She knew there was a spot for her there, and was happy about it. They had been each other’s big loves in life, even though they separated, and it was appropriate that they end up together. We had our father’s headstone engraved: “Thank you for your love,” and our mother’s: “Thank you for your strength.”
The Mullers did not come to the service. Hans had married after they separated and in our agitation after my mother’s death, we did not manage to reach his son, Martin, in time for the funeral . . . I feel very bad about that because Martin had remained very close to her; I love him and Lily was a mother to him.
“Today, we’re taking Lily, my mother, for her eternal rest,” I wrote to her friends and my friends who couldn’t be there. “Our hearts are heavy but they should also be light because she has been liberated from all pain and has left on her eternal adventure surrounded by so much love.
“Fifty-five years almost to the day, Lily was liberated from the death camps. Twenty-two years old and less than 28 kilos. In that little package of bones, there was a flame, a flame that was life. Doctors forbade her to have children, she had two. She taught them everything, how to see, question, learn, understand and more important, never to be afraid.
“She touched all the ones that she met, listened to their problems, brought solutions and inspired them to find joie de vivre again. She looked so frail and fragile but she was strong and courageous, always curious to discover new horizons. She lived fully and will continue to do so through her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and her friends who loved her so.”
I signed the letter from all of us—“Diane, Philippe, Alexandre, Tatiana, Sarah, Kelly, Talita, and Antonia.” (My grandsons Tassilo and Leon were not born yet.)
I found a sweet note among many others my mother had written to herself, had it printed with an embossed lily of the valley because it was her favorite flower, and included it with what I had written.
“God gave me life and luck with my life,” she’d written. “During my life, I’ve kept my luck all along. I have felt it like a shadow. It follows me everywhere and so I take it wherever I go, saying, ‘Thank you, my luck. Thank you, my life. Thank you. Thank you.’ ”
2
LOVE
“Love is life is love is life . . .” I first wrote these words inside a heart when asked to design a T-shirt for a charity years ago, in the early nineties. I don’t remember which charity it was for, but I do remember taking a photo of the T-shirt on Roffredo Gaetani, an aristocratic, muscular, good-looking Italian ex-boyfriend of mine, cropping his head and turning the photo into a postcard. I still have some of those postcards, and that same drawing marches across my computer screen, has appeared on DVF iPhone cases, canvas shopping bags, graffiti wrap dresses, even babyGap bodysuits. The words from my heart have become my personal mantra and the signature motto for the company.
Love is life is love. There is no way to envision life without love, and at this point in my life, I don’t think there is anything more important—love of family, love of nature, love of travel, love of learning, love of life in every way—all of it. Love is being thankful, love is paying attention, love is being open and compassionate. Love is using all the privileges you possess to help those who are in need. Love is giving voice to those who don’t have one. Love is a way of feeling alive and respecting 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. Being in love can be a need, a fantasy, or an obsession, whereas loving truly is a much calmer and happier state. I agree with George Sand, the nineteenth-century French novelist: “There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved,” she wrote. I’ve enjoyed that happiness many times, but what I discovered with age is that true love is unconditional, and that is bliss.
Love is about relationships, yet the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Who else is with you at all times? Who else feels the pain when you are hurt? The shame when you are humiliated? Who can smile at your small satisfactions and laugh at your victories but you? Who understands your moments of fear and loneliness better? Who can console you better than you? You are the one who possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.
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. “Take time this summer to really get to know yourself,” I told a graduating class of high school girls as they were about to start their own journey of life. “Become your best friend; it is well worth it. It takes a lot of work and it can be painful because it requires honesty and discipline. It means you have to accept who you are, see all your faults and weaknesses. Having done that, you can correct, improve, and little by little discover the things you do like about yourself and start to design your life. There is no love unless there is truth and there is nothing truer than discovering and accepting who you really are. By being critical, you will find things you dislike as well as things you like, and the whole package is who you are. The whole package is what you must embrace and the whole package is what you have control of. It is you! Everything you think, do, like, becomes the person you are and the whole thing weaves into a life, your life.”
I finished my talk with an ancient quotation:
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.
I was lucky to start a relationship with myself very early in life. I am not sure why; maybe because I had no sibling until the age of six and I was alone a lot, or maybe because I was taught from an early age to be responsible for myself and for my actions.
I remember discovering that little “me” person in the reflection of my mother’s vanity mirror and being intrigued by it. Not that I loved my image, but as I made funny and ugly faces at my own reflection, I enjoyed the control I had over it; I
could make it do anything I wanted. I was absorbed by that little “me” person and wanted to discover more about her. Later, when I learned to write, I wrote stories about this character and the fantasies I imagined for her. The fictional stories became rarer as I turned to writing my diaries, recounting my experiences, my frustrations, my sense of cosmic emptiness, or my desire to conquer. My diary became my friend, my refuge.
My teenage diaries got lost and though I wish I still had them, I rarely look back at the ones I do have. Their importance was in the moment, of having a friend to confide in. At this point in my life, I seldom write in my diaries. I have replaced the writing with a visual diary. I carry a camera with me everywhere and take pictures of what I want to store in my memory—people, nature, objects, architecture. Often I use those photos for inspiration.
I also learned how critical it is for me to have time alone to recharge and strengthen that inner connection. It is easy to lose oneself when you are with people all the time. I need silence and solitude to create a buffer against the daily barrage of information and challenges. Sometimes, in a big crowd, even at parties that I host, I find myself disappearing for a few minutes to be alone. I used to feel sad and out of place in those moments, lonely and disconnected. I don’t anymore. I use these moments to reconnect with myself and build my strength.
Equally soothing and crucial is my love and need for nature. Nothing is more nourishing than seeing the day appear from the night, the strength of the waves, the majesty of the trees. Walking in the woods, being lost in nature reminds me of how small we are in the universe and somehow that reassures me. I remember one day walking in the country with my then very small son, Alexandre. I was lost in thought and when he inquired what those thoughts were, I responded, “I wonder what will happen to us.” Very wisely little Alexandre answered, “I know what will happen, Mommy. Spring will come and the leaves will cover the trees again, then it will be summer, then autumn and the leaves will change color and fall. Winter and snow will follow.” I smiled and took his hand. “Of course that is what will happen,” I answered. I never forgot that moment.
Love is life is love and like most mothers, my strongest love has always been for my children. I’ll never forget the intense rush I felt the first time I saw Alexandre. Not only was he my firstborn, I felt as if I already knew him. I had had many long conversations with him before he was born and I have always felt he was my partner as much as my son.
Alexandre was also the answer to my dream as a young girl—to have a little American son when I grew up. As a European girl, I always thought American boys were cooler, more casual and more boyish. Boys in Europe seemed serious and sometimes even repressed and I loved that American boys, who watched football and played sports endlessly, were not. Anyway, I got exactly what I wanted: a real little American boy, though he carries Egon’s title of “prince.” However, as I’ve watched the grown Alexandre raise his own American boys, I’ve realized that I failed him at least in one thing—I did not pay enough attention to his athletic life and seldom went to his games when he was growing up. I was never the Soccer Mom he secretly wished for.
In many respects I didn’t know what I was doing when he was a baby, because, like any young mother, I had no experience. I was a little intimidated and relied heavily on our Italian nanny until I happened upon her handling Alexandre roughly in the bath—and fired her. From then on, no longer intimidated, I followed my common sense.
Beautiful, mischievous Princess Tatiana Desiree von und zu Furstenberg followed her brother thirteen months later. She was something else. I said from the beginning that she was the drop of oil you put into egg yolks and mustard to make mayonnaise happen. She was the magic that turned we three into a real family. When Tatiana was born, it wasn’t Egon and me having a child, it was Egon, Alexandre, and me becoming a full family. And though the marriage didn’t last, we remained a family forever.
I have great empathy with working mothers and the tug of war they feel, as I did, between staying with my children and going off to work. It never occurred to me to give up my growing business because I insisted on paying all my bills and took no money from Egon when we separated, but it was always wrenching to walk out the door. Once outside, however, I felt free, energized, and focused on making a good life for all of us. And it quickly came true all because of that little wrap dress.
With the first money I earned, I bought Cloudwalk, an astonishingly beautiful property in Connecticut for my twenty-seventh birthday so we could spend relaxed time together in a setting where we could also feel free. And we did. I spent much time there with the children and their school friends, cooking for them and often transporting one of them to the emergency room to see if a cut needed stitches or an arm was more than just bruised. During the week I’d be a tycooness in New York again, striding out the door in my high heels and fishnet stockings. I winked in the mirror, smiled at my shadow, and off I went, to make a living and become the woman I wanted to be.
From the beginning, I treated Alexandre and Tatiana more as people than as children. I never talked down to them and always encouraged them to express their opinions and take responsibility for themselves. Making me independent is what my mother did for me, and I was, for sure, going to do that for my children. Just as I had started keeping a journal in my childhood, I urged them to start recording their lives and thoughts. They began even before they were old enough to read and write, drawing the events of their days in pictures. We ended the day by exchanging news about what they’d done at school and what I’d done at work during “discussion time” on their beds. I involved them in every facet of my life, including my business. “I have my job and school is your job,” I told them. “We all go to work, we all have our own lives, we all have our responsibilities. You deliver on yours and I’ll deliver on mine.” It turned out to be a very good approach. Tatiana excelled at school, Alex did very well, and I managed all right at work.
I took them with me on trips as often as I could and, in spite of themselves, they became very good travelers. They would often complain or be upset about traveling conditions that seemed dangerous or boring to them at the moment, but those moments from their unusual adventures ended up being wonderful memories and great stories to tell. I remember a trip to the very isolated, prehistoric island of Nias across from Sumatra in the Indonesian archipelago. The tiny little local boat we took was fragile, to say the least. The return crossing in the middle of the night was rough, hot, and buggy. We kept silent as I prayed that we would make it safely to the mainland. Exotic it was, but maybe too exotic, risky, and dangerous, but we made it. That trip ended up in both their college applications in answer to the question: “What was one of the most riveting and adventurous things you’ve done in your life?”
In such extreme circumstances, and in other, calmer ones, I treasured traveling with my children. Traveling with children is unique because it is about discovering together. You are equal in front of new things and experiences. I always found it a great period of closeness, and I recommend it to parents. You lose the power role a bit and become companions. You don’t have to say look at this and look at that because you’re discovering at the same time—the landscapes you see, the people you encounter, the lines for tickets, the stop for lunch, the unexpected.
Could I have become the woman I wanted to be without having children? I certainly would not have been the same person. In fact, it’s very hard, impossible really, for me to imagine what my life would have been without them. We actually grew up together. I was twenty-four when I had them both, barely a grown-up myself. I wasn’t old enough to have yearned for children, yet suddenly there they were and my responsibility. I loved them with an intensity I’d never felt before. They were a part of me forever.
I was helped enormously by their two amazing grandmothers, both of whom were very present in my children’s lives. My mother came to live with us in New York for months during the school year and struck her own loving relationship with them
. Egon’s mother, Clara Agnelli Nuvoletti, was just as attentive. The children spent almost every vacation with her, either on the island of Capri, at her house outside Venice, or in the mountain chalet in Cortina. My mother had become a very good friend of Clara’s, and often she went along so my children had two fantastic grandmothers with them.
How wonderful it was, especially for Tatiana. Alexandre started going off on various adventures like glacier skiing and sailing, but Tatiana preferred staying with her grandmothers. She learned French from my mother and Italian and cooking from Clara. Her second husband, Giovanni Nuvoletti, was the president of the culinary academy of Italy and Clara wrote several cookbooks. Tatiana became an excellent cook and often cooks for us now. She also had long philosophical discussions with both of her grandmothers about love and the meaning of life. Clara would make her laugh with the gossip of her very privileged life and my mother would remind her of the challenges of adversity.
Unlike me, the grandmothers had nothing but time, which was wonderful for the children and wonderful for me. They had such a strong and very important influence: They were teachers, role models, active participants, and, above all, loving family members. Both had memories to share, both had great senses of humor, and both were great storytellers.
In a house with three women—my mother, Tatiana, and me—Alexandre was always considered the man of the house. He was the one we trained to be counted on. Now that he is a grown man, he has become all the things I had wished him to be. He watches over our assets and has become very valuable to the growth of DVF. Tatiana also became an important protector of the family: a specialist in diagnosing illnesses and best at giving advice. Now they both watch over Barry and me. We all sit on the board of DVF and we share the Diller–von Furstenberg Family Foundation. My children are the bookends that support me. We talk on the phone every day, sometimes more than once. “I love you,” “I love you, too,” we end each conversation.
The Woman I Wanted to Be Page 4
