Fashion's Diane von Furstenberg, Auschwitz, Holocaust Survivor Mother, 49 lbs, Taught Her Not To Fear
- The tragedy and triumph of Diane von Fürstenberg: ‘My mother taught me fear is not an option,’ The Guardian, Nov. 27, 2023. - Edited. - She was the miracle baby, born after her mother survived the concentration camps, who married a prince, then became rich and famous as a fashion designer. She discusses love, life advice and losing her virginity
Diane von Fürstenberg picks up on the first ring. I start by asking her where she is at the moment. “Oh, it’s very complicated,” she says. A drawn-out, gravelly sigh crackles down the line. “I’m in a very contemplative place. I’m almost 77, and I have had a big life. A folkloric life. A great adventure. And now it is time to look at the balance sheet of that life.” I was wondering about her geographical whereabouts, not her philosophical ones, but the answer is pure Von Fürstenberg. She has always been one for the big picture, for the grand gesture, for feeling all the feels.
Even the wrap dress which made her fame and her fortune – an icon which turns 50 next year – was only ever a means to an end, a way for Von Fürstenberg to get the life she wanted. As a little girl, she says, she didn’t know what she wanted to do when she grew up, but she did know what kind of woman she wanted to be. And that was a woman in charge. “I didn’t know the specifics of what that meant, but I absolutely knew the feeling. And I became the woman I wanted to be, because of that dress. I created the dress, but really the dress created me.”
Von Fürstenberg is very much in charge. I saw her in the flesh not long ago, and the most photographed cheekbones of the 1970s, as per the New York Times, are still in full effect.
She has been packing to travel to Cloudwalk, the Conn. estate she bought herself for her 27th birthday, when the cheques started rolling in. Then she will travel to Oxfordshire for a conference to meet with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy who recently finished a documentary about Von Fürstenberg’s life.. Survival is at the heart of Von Fürstenberg’s story. Her mother, Liliane Halfin, was taken to Auschwitz on a cattle train at 21, and later moved to Ravensbrück. Liberated 13 months later, “She was a bag of bones in a field of ashes." American doctors did not expect her to live, let alone go on to have children.
But, reunited with her fiance, she married, and gave birth to Von Fürstenberg within 18 months. “I was born so close to being liberated that I consider myself a survivor, too,” she says. “My birth was a triumph of love over misery. My mother used to call me her torch of freedom, and she wanted me to have a big life.” Her mother would bless her bed every night: thankful for the sheets, the blanket, the pillow and the warmth, after sleeping on a wooden plank shared with rats in the concentration camps. When Von Fürstenberg was afraid of the dark, her mother locked her in the closet. “She taught me that fear is not an option.”...
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/nov/27/the-tragedy-and-triumph-of-diane-von-furstenberg-my-mother-taught-me-fear-is-not-an-option
-----------
(Wiki) Fürstenberg was born Diane Simone Michele Halfin in Brussels, Belgium, to Jewish parents. Her father, Bessarabian-born Leon (Lipa) Halfin, migrated to Belgium in 1929 from Chişinău, Kingdom of Romania (now Moldova) and later sought refuge from the Nazis in Switzerland. Her mother was Greek-born Liliane Nahmias, from Thessaloniki, a Holocaust survivor, who was initially captured by the Nazis while she was a member of the Resistance during World War II. 18 months before Fürstenberg was born, her mother was a prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_von_F%C3%BCrstenberg
