Design Your Life: Diane von Furstenberg (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of Diane von Furstenberg’s talk titled “Design Your Life” at TEDxVeniceBeach 2018 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

A Mother’s Legacy

What was that speech before? May 1944 in occupied Belgium. A young girl, age 22, gets arrested because she was doing resistance and bringing fake papers, and gets transferred after four days in cattle train, she arrives in Auschwitz. She is 22 years old. The war is almost over everywhere, but she goes there, is in the war camps.

Then there’s this famous death walk that she goes to another camp, Ravensbrück, and then another camp as the Germans were losing the war. By the time she arrived at the third camp, she was very, very bad. She could hardly move. She weighed 49 pounds. One day, they woke up, and the German had gone, and the Russian came, and the Russian raped them, and then they’re gone, and then the American came, and they were put in hospital.

She weighed 49 pounds, but she went back to Belgium. And, her mother fed her little by little, little bit by little bit, every ten minutes, till she grew like a balloon. And six months later, her fiancé, who was in Switzerland, came back, they met, and they got married. And the doctor told them, “You can get married, but you can absolutely not have a child. Because if you have a child, you won’t survive, and the child won’t be normal.”

Well, sure enough, nine months later, I was born, and I was not normal. And that was the story of my mother. My mother used to say to me, she used to write and tell me, “God saved me so that I can give you life. By giving you life, you gave me my life back.

You are my torch of freedom.”

Lessons from Mother

So this is a lot for a little girl. And there I was with the torch of freedom. So the three lessons that my mother gave me that are the most valuable to me, one is fear is not an option. So she would actually, if I was afraid of the dark, she would put me in the dark closet and lock me in the dark closet. Today she would probably go to jail.

But anyway, what happens if you are in a dark closet, first of all, after a few minutes, you realize that it’s not dark. It doesn’t stay dark. And even if it did, you shouldn’t be afraid. So fear is not an option, but something that was really put into me. The other one was no matter what, you can never be a victim.

It doesn’t matter. She used to say, “I looked at the German in the eyes.” And anyway, never be a victim. When they arrived at the camp, she always said that one of the worst things were the cattle train that they were in for four days going from Belgium to Poland. So she became friendly with a woman who was in her 40s.

And she said, “No matter what, I will never leave this woman. I will never leave this woman.” This woman spoke a little German. So she just stuck to this woman. When they arrived, they were shaved and they were put in a long, long line, and there was a soldier who would say, “You go right, you go left, you go right, you go left.”

And then behind this man, in an elevated something just like about this, there was another man of a higher rank, all dressed in white, and he didn’t move. And so when time came for the friend of my mother, the soldier said, “You go right,” and my mother did not wait. She went right following, and the soldier let her do that. This other man who hadn’t moved the entire time went, took my mother, hit her, I mean whipped her, and threw her on the other side. And she looked at this man with such hate and such hate, and why?

ALSO READ: Transcript: Lauren Singer on Why I Live a Zero Waste Life at TEDxTeen

Why do you have to do that? She’s never hated anybody so much. Well, the truth is that this man actually saved her life, because the people who were going on the right went to the gas chamber. So the reason I’m telling you that is we all go through a situation that something completely goes wrong, and we think it’s the worst thing in the world. So maybe it’s not.

Growing Up Different

So this is a very dramatic example of it, but it works if a friend of yours complains. So I grew up feeling a little bit like an alien. In Belgium, everybody has blonde straight hair, and I had little black curly hair. And, I was born after the war. I didn’t have a brother, a sibling until I was six, so I was very much on my own.

So, I had books. I love to read and I love to imagine things. I started to write my diary, and I really wonder, will anything ever happen to me? I mean, Belgium’s so sad and it rains all the time, and the more it rains, the more my hair gets curly. And I really did not know what was going to happen.

But at that time, really early on, I had a revelation. And my revelation, it happened watching myself in the mirror. My mother had a big vanity with a mirror. And I was looking at this mirror. And it’s not that I thought I was pretty because I didn’t, but what I liked about this mirror is if I made moves, she would make the same movement.

And I could stay hours doing this, doing my I would do this, I would do that, and that’s the day I realized that I actually had control over myself. And it’s probably been the most useful thing I’ve ever had, and that’s why I always say the most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself. Because after that, any other relationship is a plus and not a must. So, my mother wanted a big life for me, so she put me in boarding school in Switzerland and in England. I was starting to live my adventure.

Finding Independence

I went to university in Geneva, Switzerland, and I met this wonderful, beautiful, good looking young prince, Egon Fürstenberg. And, I was dying to be independent. More than anything, I wanted to be independent. I wanted to have my own life, design my life, know what I wanted to do. And when you start in life, you don’t really know.

There’s all these doors in front of you, which is going to be your door. And my door happened to be meeting a man who had a factory, and he had a printing factory in Italy. And there he used to print, he used to print scarves for Gucci and Ferragamo and all these places. And there, I was just watching him screaming at his workers. He was quite obnoxious actually.

But I learned everything. And with the workers in Italy, you learn everything because a colorist, their father was a colorist, the grandfather was a colorist, so I learned everything about color. And I asked the man, “Please, please, may I make some samples from your factory and we’ll try to go and sell them in America.” Then he said, okay. My boyfriend stops in Rome.

I go and visit him in Rome. We get engaged. He goes on to Southeast Asia. I go back to the factory. My friend manufacturer drives me from factory to factory.

I arrive in Milan, I’m not feeling well. I think it’s because he’s driving a Maserati. No, I’m pregnant. So I find myself pregnant with this wonderful attractive rich man. This was not the way I had planned it.

ALSO READ: The Brain in Love: Helen Fisher at TED Talk (Full Transcript)

I wanted to be independent. Everybody was going to say, why this little girl got him because she was pregnant? Long story short, marriage was decided for two months later, and so I made my first collection. I absolutely wanted to be independent, and I came to America. I came slowly.

I decided to come by boat because I wanted to dream about my future life. Of course, I was so nauseous that I dreamed about nothing. And I arrived in America, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I had a suitcase full of clothes. I had one baby.

The Birth of an Icon

Thirteen months later, I had another baby going back to, in fact, I took a hotel suite. I showed my first dresses. I had miserable little orders. I would go back to Italy begging for this man to make me the dresses. And then he said, “I don’t have a sample room. I have a big factory.” Please, please, please. And it went on. And then, little by little, there was a little wrap top, the little wrap top became a wrap dress, and the wrap dress was born in 1974. And I lived an American dream.

It was the most amazing thing. I went through I mean, I had a great salesman who knew all the stores and he would send me everywhere. I went from store to stores, and I was selling confidence. I was as I was getting confident myself, I was selling confidence. And because what I was selling was a dress, it all made sense.

I related to the women. It was just an incredible adventure. And it was also the women’s liberation. It was so fun to be a young woman at the time. We were so free.

We thought we invented freedom. So, you know, everybody says that I made that dress, but actually that dress made me. And, my dream had always been to live a man’s life in a woman’s body. And I did it. By then I’m separated from my husband, but in a very very friendly, but I’m feeling free.

I am independent. I made a lot of money. I had two children. I was like at the top of the world. I remember one day, and it’s a wonderful story.

One day I was, because I had small children at home, so when I traveled, I tried to take early plane in the morning, and there I was going to Pittsburgh from New York in an early plane, and no man, all men, and I’m the only woman in the plane. And I’m, you know, kind of cute and wearing a little dress with legs and things. And that day, I was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And so I had all kinds of magazines and newspaper, and on top of it was the Wall Street Journal. And, so there’s this guy next to me, and he’s trying well, he’s looking, and he’s trying hard.

What is he going to say to start a conversation? And then he says to me, “Why does a girl like you read the Wall Street Journal?” So I looked at him and I thought, jerk. And I say, obviously, it was so easy to say, but look, idiot. I am on the front page of the news.

But I actually decided to say nothing. And that was one of the best best best satisfaction I ever had in my life that I said nothing. Of course, every time I make a speaking engagement, I tell the story. All right, but of course not everything goes right, not everything, and what goes up must go down. After the huge success, I had, you know, everybody in America had one, two, three, five, ten, twenty wrap dresses.

Facing Challenges

And so overnight, it’s, you know, it kind of sank and I had to sell my business. Meanwhile, I had started a cosmetic business. And so my children grow up, they went to boarding school. I fall in love with a writer in Paris, I moved to France and I think fashion business is over for me. And I stay in Paris and I do a publishing house for five years and the love affair is not so great anymore.

ALSO READ: Adam Lerner: The Art of Risk at TEDxMileHigh (Full Transcript)

I miss my children. I miss America. I come back to America. And there I had a really, really hard time because I realized that what I had done, my work, my brand, at the time, you didn’t even call it a brand, you didn’t, was my identity and I had lost my identity. And as a matter of fact, within two years, I got a cancer of the tongue and at the base of the tongue.

And I do think that the reason I had that is because I had lost my expression. I couldn’t express myself. Anyway, I had to face that and I did and, I learned how to meditate, I learned what the doctor could do, and I learned what my own power, and, that was 23 years ago, so we’re good. So anyway, today I am at, as you watching me today, I am 70 years old. And everyone tells me, “Why you tell everybody you’re 70?”

And I said, I don’t understand when some oh, you’re five years old. You’re eight already. You’re twelve. You’re eighteen. And then all of a sudden, nothing?

I don’t understand. I mean, I’ve lived so fully. I should be 120 years old. So anyway, I am now, as I was turning 70 a few months ago, I wanted to take time and think what kind of woman I was going to be for my third act. What how do I stay relevant?

The Power of Intention

And I was doing Tai Chi. I have a very good instructor of Tai Chi. And when you do Tai Chi, he said, focus on the intention. And I stopped him and I said, “Intention. Tell me more about intention.”

And he said, “Well, if you focus on force, you will fail or break. If you focus on energy, you will stagnate. But if you focus on intention and think about it a lot, you will achieve your goal and your power.” So this was wonderful gift that he gave me. And so as I am today at my age, I decided that what I want to do is I want to use my voice, I want to use my experience, I want to use my knowledge, my connection in order to engage more and more the conversation, especially with women.

I have never met a woman who is not strong. All women are strong, but sometimes it’s a brother, a religion, a father, or sometimes it’s just themselves. Oh, I don’t want to make him feel small. Oh, I don’t want to do this. We all are like that.

But yet if there is a tragedy, somehow always the woman takes over becomes a lion and saves the situation. So my advice is don’t wait for the tragedy to know that you are strong. Work on yourself. Work on that knowledge of your strong. If you know you’re strong, you don’t always have to show it.

But that is very much what I want to spend the rest of my life to do is to capture, to use my voice, to capture voices of other women and weave into fabric of strength, compassion and impact to make this world a better world. Thank you.