A year after marrying, Fürstenberg began designing women's clothes: "The minute I knew I was about to be Egon's wife, I decided to have a career. I wanted to be someone of my own, and not just a plain little girl who got married beyond her desserts." After the Fürstenbergs separated in 1973, Egon also became a fashion designer. After moving to New York, she met high-profile
Vogue editor
Diana Vreeland, who declared her designs "absolutely smashing". She had her name listed on the fashion calendar for
New York Fashion Week, and so her business was created. In 1974, she introduced the knitted
jersey "
wrap dress", which became an iconic piece in women's fashion; it is included in the collection of the Costume Institute of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Von Fürstenberg opted to first advertise the wrap dress in Women’s Wear Daily in 1974, and included the tag line: “Feel like a woman, wear a dress!” Soon after the launch, 25,000 dresses were selling each week; one million dresses had been sold by 1976, according to
Forbes. Tailored during the 1970s
women's liberation era, the wrap dress also managed to embody the shifting roles of women in society at the time and was regarded as a dress for a "woman in charge." She launched a cosmetic line and her first fragrance, "Tatiana", named after her daughter. That same year, a large-scale retrospective exhibition entitled "Diane von Furstenberg: Journey of a Dress" opened at the
Manezh, one of Moscow's largest public exhibition spaces. Curated by
Andre Leon Talley, it attracted media attention. In 2010, the exhibition traveled to
São Paulo; and in 2011, to the
Pace Gallery in
Beijing. In 2010, von Furstenberg was awarded a gold medal at the annual
Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Gold Medal Gala. In 2011, DVF introduced a home collection, and a signature fragrance, Diane. In 2012, von Fürstenberg launched her first children's collection with GapKids and a denim collaboration with Current/Elliott. exhibition
In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. Her clothes have been worn by celebrities including
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Kate Beckinsale,
Madonna,
Tina Brown,
Jessica Alba,
Susan Sarandon,
Priyanka Chopra,
Jennifer Lopez and
Whitney Houston.
Google Glass made its New York Fashion Week debut at the designer's Spring 2013 fashion show. In 2014, the designer joined the
Ban Bossy campaign as a spokesperson advocating leadership roles for girls. She also released her second memoir, The Women I Wanted to Be, an autobiography which delved into her personal life and upbringing. Between 2017 and 2019, the DVF brand
lost nearly $80 million, leading to an eventual 75% of the workforce made redundant in the U.S in May 2020. By 2018, sales, which had been $300 million before the 2008 recession, were down to $150 million. In 2018, the brand banned
mohair use after a
PETA exposé showed workers mutilating and killing goats to obtain it. All fur, angora and exotic skins were also banned from future collections. In 2020, DVF closed 18 of its 19 American stores. That same year, the company's UK division entered
administration due to restrictions caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, she released her documentary,
Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge. ==Philanthropy==