Washington University’s Graham Chapel was the site of a packed house Oct. 12 listening to life lessons and wisdom from a fashion icon. “Speaking of Fashion: Conversation with Diane von Furstenberg” featured the famous designer chatting with Derek Blasberg, a noted fashion industry author who attended Affton High School. At the conclusion of the event, Susan Sherman, co-founder and interim CEO of the St. Louis Fashion Fund, presented von Furstenberg with the Saint Louis Fashion Fund Award.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones welcomed the audience, wearing a wrap dress in the style Furstenberg made famous. Fun fact: Michelle Obama also wore a von Furstenberg dress in an official White House holiday card.

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Diane von Furstenberg. Photo by Bill Motchan

Von Furstenberg, 76, is Jewish and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her husband, the entertainment industry executive Barry Diller, is also Jewish. She credits her mother’s strength and tenacity for her success and drive.

“Well, she gave me life,” Von Furstenberg began. “And I didn’t realize this until much later, but my mother—18 months before I was born — she was a skeleton after 14 months in a labor camp. She wasn’t supposed to survive. She went back to Belgium and a doctor told her not to have children, that she wouldn’t survive. But she did.”

Her DvF awards honored Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020 in the Supreme Court justice’s final public appearance. The criteria for award winners, von Furstenberg said, “are strength, courage and leadership, all of which I got from my mother.”

In discussing the high and low points of her career, von Furstenberg said, “In life, you go up, you go down, but in business and life, you just must be true to yourself. And your worst time in business will eventually be your best anecdote.”

Besides her business success, Blasberg asked von Furstenberg about her community support and philanthropic projects. Among those was raising $100 million for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and creating a foundation with Diller to support New York City’s High Line.

“When you move into a neighborhood you meet your neighbors,” she explained. “I met a neighbor who asked me to host a fundraiser for the High Line and I did. Now, it’s the No. 1 tourist attraction in New York.”

This was not von Furstenberg’s first visit to St. Louis. In the early 1970s, she said, just as her business was taking off, she visited the Stix, Baer and Fuller department store, “To see how many wrap dresses they had.”

Blasberg asked von Furstenberg about her decision to create a home base and showroom in the Manhattan Meatpacking District. Her response: “It certainly wasn’t for the smell.”

Only one comment from Blasberg stumped von Furstenberg, who is fluent in French. He noted that she won the Chevalier de la Legion D’Honneur and then explained that St. Louis has a major thoroughfare with a distinctive French name.

“It’s Gravois, but we pronounce it ‘GRAH-VOY,’ not ‘GRAV-WAH.’