Eric Pattee, Sketch Loosely Based on Diane von Furstenberg, c 2015
(February 10, 2017 -- i.e., 3½ months later) I saw this recommended on several fashion Instagrams I follow, and noted that it was short, and committed to it.However, I don’t understand how those Instagrammers liked it enough to recommend it… I mean, it’s not a horrible memoir… but it feels a little sanitized ...or a little too polished… or something. DVF doesn’t whitewash unflattering or unhappy moments in her life, but they all “help her learn something” or they open a door to something else that turns out well… she is not someone to dwell on miseries (or she realizes misery doesn’t make a good memoir)... (and of course being someone who doesn’t dwell on unhappy events is a good thing to be, so why am I kvetching???).
The material that sounds true and honest, unpolished, uncurated is when DVF describes a great passion -- like admiring her mother, loving her father, wanting to prove herself over and over.
The rest of the time the stories are pretty managed and everything is glossy-magazine level -- her daughter is “beautiful,” her granddaughters are “beautiful,” everyone she loves is “beautiful” or “handsome,” etc.
It’s almost as if her flaws and disappointments are included calculatingly to offset the glossiness.
She drops a lot of names but doesn't give us insight into anybody, or even much description of anybody other than to say she loved them and, WAY MORE IMPORTANTLY, they saw her talent and gave her career boosts.
You get a little bit of a sense of how a designer sets up a business, and a bit of an understanding of how a business fails even when it looks publicly like a raging success, so that was interesting.
Interesting in a totally minor way was the organization… DVF went through a number of different themes of her life from beginning to end, and along the way would re-showcase all of her relationships and homes in terms of where they were at that time. It’s like: she didn’t just tell the story of her and Egon beginning to end, done and dusted, then move on chronologically. She would tell new stories about Egon or Barry Diller or one of her many lovahs when she got to the appropriate moment in the history of the first wrap dress, or each of her companies, or each of her major home locations..
It was a strangely good way to flesh stuff out.
I never found out what exactly DVF meant by “the woman I wanted to be”.... It changed constantly throughout her life, like it does for us all. I thought by the title that she maybe had a childhood vision that she made into reality in a dramatic, inspiring way, but she…. didn’t.
