The Rise and Fall of the Wrap Dress
Diane von Furstenberg had a smart idea then the press took care of the rest...
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Diane Von Furstenberg did not set out to become a fashion designer. As a new documentary Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge portrays, it was pure happenstance. “I don’t think I had a vocation for fashion. I had a vocation to be a woman in charge. To be a free woman,” DVF said.
Over an hour and a half of footage, most of which narrated by DVF herself, director Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy shares the story of the Belgian tycoon—from her comfortable upbringing in Brussels to her celebrated move to New York. Viewers travel around the world as DVF attends boarding school in Switzerland, gets her first job as a photographer’s assistant in Paris, becomes an apprentice at a textile mill in Italy, and eventually makes her mark in New York. Yet the takeaway ultimately falls a bit flat, which perhaps says more about the media’s adulation of European aristocracy than the actual skills of DVF.
Born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin to a Romanian father and Jewish mother in 1946, she acquired her nomenclature when she married a prince (literally), Egon von Fürstenberg in 1969. In the popular imagination, DVF conjures images of the wrap dress and women’s empowerment messaging. This is because she reinterpreted the closet staple in the early ‘70s, using jersey to drape a boldly printed piece and fasten it at the waistline with a tie belt cut from the same fabric.
A Brief History of the Wrap Dress
The wrap dress is perceived as a descendant of traditional Korean dress (hanbok), specifically a wrapped single-layer coat worn by scholars and noblemen in the 19th century. Although DVF is credited with its invention, different iterations of the wrap dress had appeared in the 1930s. In fact, Elsa Schiaparelli designed a version in black, which will sound surprising to those familiar with her surrealist clothes. Charles James also offered his take with the Taxi Dress (circa 1932), designed so that a woman could slip into it while in the back of a taxi. Moreover, Claire McCardell’s Pop-over dress (1942) employed a wrap-around neckline and apron silhouette.
These wrap dresses rejected material stiffness, allowing for ease of movement and versatility at a time when women had to attend to social and family obligations. Not surprisingly, they were commercial hits as housewives and wealthy socialites clung to them for a sense of personal freedom. Gabrielle Chanel had understood this in the 1920s when she experimented with jersey to create her iconic two-piece sets. DVF’s modernization of the wrap dress honors this historical precedent.
Why the Wrap Dress Is Significant
A combination of luck and timing contributed to the success of the DVF wrap dress. The uncomplicated, boldly printed garment captured the zeitgeist of the 1970s, a decade marked by the second wave of feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement led by Gloria Steinem. As women prepared to enter the workforce in record numbers, they gravitated towards sartorial markers—both subtle and expressive—that signaled their newfound independence. DVF offered an alternative to women who wanted to challenge the traditional corporate uniform. Out with the suit, in with the slinky wrap dress that asserts femininity in the boardroom!