Diane von Furstenberg

A sweeping biography of one of the most influential and controversial legends of New York fashion—the iconic designer whose creations captured the modern feminist spiritIn 1969, when women's liberation and equal rights were on everyone's lips, twenty-two-year-old Diane von Furstenberg set out to have a career of her own. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Diane grew up a frizzy-haired, gap-toothed outsider in Brussels. Improbably, she became the wife of Austrian nobleman Egon von Furstenberg, moved to New York City, and quickly made herself a fixture of an outrageous fashion scene. Pregnant and lugging a suitcase of samples to department stores, Diane started a dress business with three styles—and in 1973, stormed onto the national stage with the invention of the wrap dress.Embraced for its flattering style by millions of American women of all ages, sizes, and shapes, the dress became a cult object, tied inexorably to the image Diane projected of...