The documentary opens with an archive image from American TV. Diane Von Fürstenberg (DvF), determined look, deadpan mouth painted pink, is the guest of a current affairs show like the Americans have the secret. The presenter sits her down in an ironic intro: “The woman who reinvents the dress… Wouah, seriously ?”. In fact, the young woman is in the process of achieving great financial success with a dress, the wrap dress – which she had the idea, for the anecdote, when she saw the silhouette of Nixon’s daughter pleading her father’s cause.
At the time, DvF was 22 years old. The journalist continues in the same misogynistic tone: “The 22-year-old girls I know are more cheerleaders.” DvF is not laughing. And we fade in, on the quantity of press coverage (Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, etc.) which she has filled with her piercing gaze since she became “a woman in charge”, according to his expression. Understand an independent woman: a responsible woman.
We met Diane last year in the walls of the Mode Dentelle museum in Brussels, when there was a retrospective exhibition of her work, precisely titled Woman In Charge. She had been, as usual, very present to us. And it’s funny to see, in the documentary, that before an event, she calls her daughter, Tatiana, to ask her for advice. She replied: “Be present, one person at a time”.
“My mother didn’t want me to be afraid”
Rewatching this doc labeled “Disney +” and the thread of DvF’s existence gives this constant feeling of witnessing a life which is embodied in the eras it has crossed. “I’m 76 but I could be 300”. Sitting with her feet in the sink, putting powder on her aquiline features, she observes her age. “Wrinkles are a bit of a map of my life”. An existence in perpetual motion, since she was 22, in fact. She was then newly married to a prince, Egon von Fürstenberg, pregnant, and she was carrying around a small suitcase of jersey fabrics in bold prints, which she had made at Ferretti, Gucci’s pattern printer. OK, she married the prince, without really getting excited about it. “I didn’t want anyone to imagine that I had gotten pregnant on purpose, or to say that the little Jew had wanted to catch the German prince.”.
If this union brings the interpersonal skills that allow Diane to cross the Atlantic and meet Diana Vreeland, then popess of Vogue US, that’s all. She quickly divorces this absent husband. Ever since she dreamed of being independent… Because as far back as she can remember, Diane has never been a child. Moreover, when she returns to the city where she was born, for the exhibition dedicated to her, at the end of April 2023, she admits: “In Brussels, I can’t help but be sad. I have always been an adult, concerned about my mother. When I came home from school, I asked: where is Mom ?”
Her mother, Liliane Nahmias, a young Belgian of Greek origin and survivor of Auschwitz, gave birth to Diane Halfin on December 31, 1946 in Brussels. “My birth was already a victory”, Dvf repeats as if to justify her individual success, which she never ceases to link to the strength of her own mother (“I don’t think she ever said to me “Attention”, she wanted me to be equipped to experience what she had experienced).
Fashion woman, businesswoman, philanthropist, feminist spokesperson, DvF cannot, however, be anything other than, according to her, this beacon of light for which her mother had made her guarantor. She will also very logically be designated as godmother of the Statue of Liberty.
⇒“Diane von Fûrstenberg: Woman in Charge”, by Trish Dalton and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy 1h37, on Disney + from June 25.
