Designer Diane von Furstenberg made her mark on the fashion world in 1974 with the invention of the wrap dress. Born Diane Halfin, the child of a Holocaust survivor, she studied economics at the University of Geneva and apprenticed under textile manufacturer Angelo Feretti in Paris. She first achieved international fame in 1969 when she married a German prince, Egon von Furstenberg (the couple divorced in 1972), then launched her fashion design company in 1970. Her invention of the knit jersey wrap dress in 1974 was a wild success, and she graced the cover of Newsweek in 1976, billed as “the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel.” In a cheeky nod to women’s independence, one early marketing campaign pointed out that the zipless wrap dress enabled a woman to get dressed and leave a man’s apartment without waking him if she had second thoughts the morning after. After financial setbacks in the late 1980s, Von Furstenberg re-launched her company’s perfume, jewelry, and clothing lines in 1997 as DVF. She became president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2006 and also serves as a founder and board member of the Diller-Von Furstenberg Family Foundation, which supports causes ranging from public parks to women’s health. She also founded the DVF awards in 2010, honoring women in leadership roles from around the world. In 2024 (50 years after the wrap dress’s creation), she and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy presented Woman in Charge, a documentary on her life, at Tribeca Film Festival. `