by Serena Kappes

Her mother encouraged Diane's independence by sending her to boarding school in Switzerland at the age of 13. There she was transformed from a self-conscious bookworm into a beautiful, confident young woman who wanted to explore the world. She went on to study in England and Madrid and then at the University of Geneva, where she majored in economics. There she hung out with the jet-set crowd, where she met and began dating her future husband Eduard Egon von und zu Furstenberg, a blond, cherub-faced Austro-Italian prince and scion of the Agnelli family of Fiat fame.

When Egon moved to New York to work in the Chase Manhattan Bank training program, Diane went with him, opening up a world of possibilities.

"It was circumstance, really. I had this friend in Italy; he had this factory. I wanted to do something in America and at the time fashion was either very hippie or drip-dry polyester. There was nothing in between," Diane explains. "He taught me everything about printing. He bought a T-shirt factory and from a T-shirt I made a T-shirt dress." Diane and Egon were soon engaged, but neither one was in a rush to get married. Diane headed back to Europe to apprentice at her friend Angelo Ferretti's knitting and printing plant while Egon set off for a journey around the world. When she realized she was pregnant, Diane sent Egon a telegram in Hong Kong to let him know of her status. They got married in a hurry despite the disapproval of certain members of Egon's family who were shocked by his union to an untitled Jewish girl.

After their honeymoon Diane started her business in earnest. With $30,000 in capital from her father and several dress samples in tow, she began networking with every fashion buyer and editor she could. Her big break came when Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of Vogue, granted her an audience and immediately saw the potential in an early version of her knit wrap dress.

Diane's vision of a washable, wrinkle-proof dress that was both sexy and practical would be the most successful concept in fashion for an entire decade. It was a far cry from the couture collections on Fifth Avenue, but it had universal appeal. A woman from Middle America could slip it on as easily as a high-powered advertising executive in midtown Manhattan. As Diane says, "To some, the wrap became a manifesto for the liberated woman of the 1970s."

By 1973, at the age of 26, Diane had two children and an astoundingly successful enterprise. She had also separated from her husband. Her wholesale profits in 1972 totaled $1.2 million; she cleared more than seven times that amount the following year. Like no other designer before her, Diane's image became closely linked with her clothes. She traveled to stores across the country and personally fitted women in the dressing rooms, showing them that, regardless of their body type, the wrap dress could flatter them. It was a groundbreaking marketing tactic. You learn as much from them as they learn from you," Diane enthused. "They come to see you and they want a piece of you, but I end up having a piece of them as well."

The mid-70s made Von Furstenberg a fashion magnate. She licensed her name for scarves, luggage, eye wear, cosmetics and more. In 1975 she had her signature on 17 products and was worth $40 million in sales. On March 22, 1976, Diane graced the cover of Newsweek, in part due to the sales of over five million wrap dresses. She was hailed ²the most marketable female in fashion since Coco Chanel."

But in 1978, with the market oversaturated with wrap dresses, Diane's company neared bankruptcy. She sold her dressnlicense and focused on her cosmetics and fragrance business. She also entered the home furnishings world. Diane had overcome another major hurdle. Yet it was far from her last.

A life-changing event occurred in 1980 when her mom suffered a mental breakdown--akin to a delayed post-traumatic stress disorder episode from the Holocaus--during a trip to Germany. It affected Diane immensely. She had never really discussed her mother's horrific experience, but a year later, when she was awarded a Woman of Achievement award by the Anti- Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Diane shocked even herself when she announced on the dais, "Most of you wear my dresses, but what you don't know is that 18 months before I was born, my mother was in Auschwitz." Remembering that moment, Diane says, "I became very emotional, and I don't like to be sentimental, but that day I realized that it was important for me to say it." Today, Diane is an ardent fund raiser and supporter of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. It's a cause to which she's deeply committed.

Things changed drastically for Diane during a lunch meeting with designer Ralph Lauren in 1994. When the subject of his brain tumor came up, Diane listened intently to the story of his struggle. The symptoms he described sounded eerily similar to some she had been experiencing. After a visit to the doctor and a subsequent biopsy of a swollen gland, she learned that she had cancerous cells at the base of her tongue and soft palate. Diane began radiation therapy, holistic treatments and meditation. "Somethings you have to accept," she says, "but what I try not to do is surrender."

Daughter Tatiana, 27, who's a writer and a graduate student in psychology at New York University, knows that surrendering is not in her mother's vocabulary. "One thing that I repeat to myself all the time is my mom's constant phrase, 'Go for it. Just do it.' She taught me how big the world is and all the many possibilities that are out there, the whole idea of taking charge of your life and designing it in whatever way fits."

With renewed strength and passion for her craft, Diane ventured back into the world of retail with the launch of DIANE. As newspapers around the country announced, the wrap was back--revamped and reinvented. The collars are smaller and rounded, the length is shorter and the fabric is silk knit, not cotton jersey. But the essence of her creation is still there. As she always has, Diane is now juggling several projects at once including plans to develop a new line of beauty and health products. She's also collecting names on her Web site (www.dvfstudio.com) to establish the kind of dialogue she's always thrived on with her loyal customers. Now, instead of meeting them in the fitting rooms, she's rocketing into cyberspace to find out what makes them tick.

Recently, Diane had a serious car accident that brought her once again face-to-face with something graver than any professional hurdle: death. Before the accident, she had been plagued with the foreboding feeling that finishing her memoirs had meant the end of her life. But with this brush with fate came an epiphany. "I was liberated," she says. "I said, 'Okay, this is it. That's the catch. I did not die.' Now I can go into the future.