Diane: A Signature Life

By Diane Von Furstenberg

Book Overview

The frank and compelling story of an extraordinary woman and her adventures in fashion, business, and life.

"Most fairy tales end with the girl marrying the prince. That's where mine began," says Diane Von Furstenberg. Von Furstenberg lived the American Dream before she was thirty, building a multimillion-dollar fashion empire while raising two children and living life in the fast lane. Her wrap dress, a cultural phenomenon in the seventies, hangs in the Smithsonian Institution; her entry into the beauty business in 1979 was as serendipitous and as successful.

Von Furstenberg learned her trade in the trenches, crisscrossing the country to make personal appearances at department stores, selling her dresses and cosmetics. That business had its ups and downs, as the fashionista entrepreneur's unparalleled success became the source of its own undoing and she contended with bankruptcy, the loss of her business, and finally a complete self-reinvention that took her back to the top of the industry. This revealing and contemplative memoir works to make sense of the contradictions of the author's life: glamour vs. hard work, European vs. American, daughter of a Holocaust survivor vs. wife of an Austro-Italian prince, mother vs. entrepreneur, lover vs. tycoon. She emerges wiser, stronger, and ever more determined never to sacrifice her passion for life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 143917587X
• ISBN13: 9781439175873
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Truly Inspiring

This book is very interesting. YOu get to learn about the fashion industry and what to expect. Since I myself am interested in entering the fashion world as a career this book helped me understand that at times buisness may be stressful but always worthwhile. Diane von Furstenberg is a women that went through many hardships but was dedicated to her work, and someday i hope to do my work as succesfully as she did. -amanda, Grayslake

A glamourous life

Diane lets us inside her very glamourous life. she takes us from the 60's to the 90's. her life is full of fashion, family, friends and love. i really enjoyed this book and have a new admiration for diane.

A truly inspiring book for women of all ages.

Ms. Von Furstenberg has really opened-up to her public. She reveals much about the trials and tribulations of her past and present businesses, of being a princess and a socialite; an entrepreneur and a single-mother; and, all the while, a successful woman. She openly shares with her readers her feelings and insecurities, as well as her setbacks and triumphs. I think women around the globe can relate to, learn from, and find inspiration in her story.

Diane Von Furstenberg is an inspiration.

I'm not a follower of fashion or the society pages, but you don't have to be to love this book. It's a great business story, and a poignant look at an extraordinary woman's life. It has glamour, romance, sex, love, business triumphs and disappointments, motherhood, royalty, the Holocaust, cancer, literature, and more fresh starts than you can count. What a life.