Diane von Furstenberg's wrap dress started out as a simple enough garment: made of knit jersey, tied at the waist, aimed at flattering the female shape while remaining wrinkle-free in a suitcase.
Forty years since its conception, though, the DVF wrap has become a wardrobe staple for women worldwide and an icon of feminism -- not to mention a gold mine for the designer, philanthropist and Forbes Power Woman.
When von Furstenberg sat down with Forbes at our Power Redefined summit, she explained that her dress was a product of its time, when the Women's Liberation Movement was in full swing. The dress showed enough cleavage and thigh to be provocative while also remaining sensible enough for day-to-day wear.
"I had no idea when I made that dress that the dress would pay all my bills, and that the dress would be on so many women, that so many generations of women would have stories about it, and feel good about it," said von Furstenburg.
"I was almost just the conduit for the dress. But it did have an effect, because it was a dress that was both proper and sexy. It was a dress that both the guy liked and his mother didn't mind."
(In the past, von Furstenberg has been less coy about the appeal of the DVF wrap, once telling an interviewer: "They're comfortable, so you're comfortable, you act comfortable, and you get laid.")
This spring, von Furstenberg celebrated the 40th anniversary of the wrap with an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Among the artifacts on show was an original ad showing DVF herself modeling her garment, alongside a tagline appropriate for an era of rising hemlines: "Feel like a woman, wear a dress."
"It was at a time that was a feminist moment and a moment of liberation," she said. "So somehow it got attached to that."
The designer has always identified as a feminist, thanks in part to the influence of her Greek-born mother, who survived the Holocaust.
"When she was 22, it was the war, and she was a POW," said von Furstenberg. "She went into the concentration camp in Auschwitz."
Von Furstenberg, born a year after the war's end, was always told that her birth was "a miracle" given the perilous circumstances.
"I felt that and [my mother] told me that," she said. "She also told me that fear was not an option. I was always told that women are stronger, so I believed it."
