Diane von Furstenberg: Queen of the Wrap Dress, Fashion Innovator and Stylemaker

Iconic designer continues to innovate—big time

By Alesandra Dubin Sep 20, 2013 6:30 PMTags
Diane Von FurstenbergDimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Some fashion icons will simply never go out of style.

The now 66-year-old Diane von Furstenberg may have formally lost her "princess" title after her divorce from the German prince Egon von Furstenberg in 1972—but she's been a fashion queen for decades.

In the 1970s, she launched her signature versatile, breezy, fun wrap dress—that came to symbolize freedom and strength for a newly empowered generation of women—selling 25,000 dresses a week from right out the gate, according to W. And in the 1990s, after a break from the biz, she relaunched her eponymous company, and reintroduced the wildly popular wrap dress—and she hasn't slowed down since.

NEWS: Diane von Furstenberg shows off her never-seen-before vintage wardrobe

That's a Wrap:

Her dress is so ubiquitous (one is even represented in New York's Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) that it's hard to narrow down its influential wearers, but here's one benchmark of her success among countless others: Michelle Obama has worn one on the White House's official Christmas card.

DvF is also the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and has been since 2006—a year after the same org honored her with the lifetime achievement award.

Her company DVF is now distributed in just a few countries around the world: 55, in fact.

Creative Collaborator:

And with all that success, she continues innovate and surprise. Last year, she launched her first children's line—a mass-market collaboration with GapKids—with a second iteration this year.

And Google used her Spring 2013 show for the runway debut of its buzzy Google Glass device, making a documentary with the resulting recorded footage. How's that for haute tech?

For her enduring contribution to women's style—with an emphasis on empowering women through fashion—and for continuing to innovate in a major way, we choose Diane von Furstenberg among our 2013 Stylemakers.

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