LIVE from NYPL: Diane von Furstenberg | Rhonda Garelick

Diane von Furstenberg, whom Newsweek called "the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel," joins award-winning scholar and Chanel biographer Rhonda Garelick to explore what it means to be a fashion icon.

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG first entered the fashion world in 1972 with a suitcase full of jersey dresses. Two years later, she created the wrap dress, which came to symbolize power and independence for an entire generation of women. By 1976, she had sold over a million of the dresses and was featured on the cover of Newsweek. After a hiatus from fashion, von Furstenberg re-launched the iconic dress that started it all in 1997, reestablishing her company as the global luxury lifestyle brand that it is today. DVF is now sold in over 55 countries. In 2005, von Furstenberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) for her impact on fashion, and one year later was elected the CFDA’s president, an office she continues to hold. She also serves on the board of Culture Shed, the new center for artistic and cultural innovation in New York City. In 2012, von Furstenberg was named the most powerful woman in fashion by Forbes Magazine. In 2014, she published a memoir, The Woman I Wanted to Be.

RHONDA GARELICK writes on fashion, literature, the arts, and politics. Her most recent book is Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History. Her other books include Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender, and Performance in the Fin de Siècle, Electric Salome: Loie Fuller’s Performance of Modernism, and, as co-editor, Fabulous Harlequin: ORLAN and the Patchwork Self. Garelick’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, New York Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, and many other newspapers, journals and museum catalogs in the US and Europe. Garelick is a Guggenheim fellow and has also received awards from the NEA, the NEH, the Getty Research Institute, the Dedalus Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Whiting Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature and French from Yale University. Garelick has taught at Yale; the University of Colorado-Boulder; Columbia University, and Connecticut College. She is currently professor of English and Performing Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. Garelick has also had a long career as an international business consultant.

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