“Beautiful Diane. She understands women—as only a woman can. And she’s done something quite wonderful for us all by creating clothes that can turn on the man in your life without turning off his mother.” That was Saks Fifth Avenue talking, in an ad that ran in the Miami Herald in 1976. Forty years after she designed her first wrap dress, Diane von Furstenberg is celebrating with a milestone exhibition at L.A.’s historic Wilshire May Company building, the future home of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. DVF herself attributes her iconic dress’ success to three things: “It’s flattering. It makes you feel sexy. And it makes you feel confident.” Produced in collaboration with curator Michael Herz (formerly of Bally), production designer Stefan Beckman, and exhibition designer Bill Katz, the retrospective showcases 200 wrap dresses dating from Von Furstenberg’s first collection to “last week.” Put the old and the new side by side, as she has done in the show, and the designer says, “You can’t tell which is which.”
Here, Von Furstenberg reminisces about some of her favorite ad campaigns.
