A Warhol in the library? It was one of the first things I noticed, upon entering Diane’s apartment in Paris. The year was 2002 and I was about to interview the woman who played the leading role in ‘Diane, a signature life’, the book she had just published. ‘Come in and do sit down’, said Diane, as I was searching for my first question – for although I had been a fashion journalist for almost fifteen years and at the time was teaching costume history at the fashion department of the Antwerp Academy, I hadn’t ever heard about the wrap dress.
I didn’t know it at the time, and even today, it seems silly to write this down, but that first encounter with Diane changed my life. I not only started going to New York Fashion Week after that interview, and thus broadened my very European view on the international fashion scene, but I also started dressing in a different way. DVF conquered my wardrobe, so to speak, one wrap dress after the other. I was never the journalist that would go crazy over the next IT- bag or designer, but it thrilled me to look in the mirror and just admit: ‘Yes, this is me. In yet another DVF look.’
Close-up of Journey of a Dress, the exhibition in Los Angeles, in January 2014
Every fashion week, I got my timeslot: fifteen minutes in Diane’s office. At first, I only asked questions related to her collection. Diane always answered with great quotes, all the while dressing her ‘lips’ sofa with those eternal legs of hers. With each season, our conversations began to evolve as we talked about people and places, and about fashion in a much larger context. I brought her books on fabrics that I thought would interest her. And whenever I published a book myself, I was sure to take one to her studio. In return, she opened doors for me to other important American fashion players, be it Marc Jacobs or the Mulleavy sisters of Rodarte –designers whose PR offices would never return the call when a journalist from a small country asked for an interview.
When Diane first showed her cruise collection in Florence in 2008 (an absolute first for DVF to show on European grounds), I was present. I wore one of her wrap dresses, in a burgundy-brown vintage print. I will never forget how one of my fellow journalists looked me in the eye as I strolled on the wonderful grounds of Giardino Torrigiani in Florence and said I looked stunning. I felt like a woman more than ever, and the short stroll from my hotel to the amazing show venue made me wonder what a walk on a red carpet would be like, in Cannes, Hollywood, or at the Met Ball. I felt the same thing thousands of other women must have felt before. Wearing the wrap, it’s the woman who’s glowing, not the dress.
I guess my story is not much different from the ones so many other women have told. We all love clothes that make us feel good. We don’t want to feel too dressed up, at least I don’t. And we want to shine. What is so special about this dress is that it captured the hearts of so many different women, all around the globe. When Ingrid Betancourt was freed after six years of captivity, the wrap was the first dress she bought. Madonna wore one to the launch of one of her children’s books in Tel Aviv. On her first Christmas card a First Lady, Michelle Obama was wearing one, too. And so did hundreds of thousands of other women when they got to work, went to a party, or first embraced their future lovers. The strange thing is, the wrap dress has nothing in common with high-end couture gowns that involve intricate patterns, five days of embroidery, and loads of tulle. The design is as simple as can be. It’s lightweight, easy to put on, and a marvel to pack.
“If travelling has taught me anything, it’s that women are so alike wherever they live”
Was DVF’s wrap dress an original? Not completely. Diane’s design looks like a variation of Claire McCardell’s shirtwaist dress but features a much leaner silhouette and a far more dramatic outcome: a focus on a woman’s hips and cleavage. At the time it was the Wonderbra avant la lettre, but without the constraints of pushing and pulling, and without its slogan: “Hello boys.” Diane may have called it, “the little bourgeois dress” in that Newsweek cover story, but it is so much more. The dress is chic, practical, and seductive, and the answer to what women wanted, both then and now. “If travelling has taught me anything, it’s that women are so alike wherever they live,” Diane once told me. It’s true. Women share the same questions about life and happiness, doubts, and insecurity, whether they live in a huge apartment on the Upper East Side of New York or in a small village in Belgium.
Of course, the dress comes with a great story. In the 1970s, it lived a bohemian, anti-elitist way of life in the love and peace era, with sexual liberation included. A cultural phenomenon overnight, it was always around, whether you stepped off the Métro or went dancing at Studio 54. The story still surrounds any wrap dress anywhere in the world. But women feel they can add their own stories to it. Whether theirs are tales of love or power, of sensuality or just great vibes, women have the impression the dress was there at important moments in their lives and has become part of who they are. That aspect should never be forgotten as it’s the essence of all great successes.
Diane in the Seventies in one of her first wrap dresses
And the wrap dress is much more than meets the eye: it stands for affordable luxury, carrying a democratic price tag that allows women, regardless of the size of their bank account, to join in. That accessibility may be the basis for the reason why more than three generations have embraced the wrap. For some it is another great vintage find, for others it is the true classic they could and would never give up. Compared to the first wrap dresses from the early 1970s, the dress hasn’t even changed that much over the years. New prints were introduced, of course, and the lapel, the arm length, or the length of the dress itself has varied. But the concept of wrapping is here to stay.
Timeless, the wrap is a kind of passe-partout that always lives up to the moment, thus reminding me of Coco Chanel’s little Ford dress, which conquered the world as the little black dress (LBD). Mademoiselle Chanel launched it in 1926 and it would become the symbol of 1920s style and women’s liberation. Chanel designed it for women, like her, who enjoyed short, clipped hair and a gorgeous tan (in an age where sunshine was to be avoided at all times). It seems that Diane had that same yearning for ease and comfort - and sexiness. She knew what the dress did for her personally and convinced thousands of other women all over the United States to try it out for themselves. And just as Coco did, Diane wore her own dresses, which was one of the smartest things she could do. The dress even played a crucial role in her own quest for freedom. Feeling oppressed in Europe, at the end of the 1960s, she welcomed New York with open arms—and the wrap dress quickly helped her in establishing her newly found freedom.
The wrap dress and one of her first slogans: 'feel like a woman, wear a dress'
“The dress paid all my bills”
“The dress paid all my bills,” Diane said during the press conference of Journey of a Dress, the exhibition in Los Angeles that celebrated the 40th anniversary of the wrap dress. It certainly did in the beginning, when Diane did everything including designing the prints, showing her clothes to buyers, taking orders, checking payments, and even sorting out the shipments in a dreary warehouse at JFK airport. I will keep this in mind the next time I have to mount the more than thirty steps to her studio in New York. Undoubtedly, I will be wearing yet another DVF dress because, honestly, the dress just makes me walk differently. It has me – and thousands of other women- thinking about our own femininity, our own lives, and the way we want to live them.
In yet another wrap dress just before the debate on women empowerment at Bozar in June 2015
