The Jewish fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg is celebrating the 50th anniversary of her iconic wrap dress. On the occasion, the Skirball Cultural Center, a Jewish institution founded in 1996, dedicates her to an exhibition opening on October 17, 2024.

"Diane von Furstenberg: Woman Before Fashion" show, curated by Nicolas Lor, explores the remarkable life and work of Jewish fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. This expansive, multidisciplinary exhibition, enriched by a lavishly illustrated catalog featuring interviews and scholarly essays, invites visitors to discover the extraordinary features of von Furstenberg's career, from the 1970s to the present day.

Organized in four thematic sections, the exhibition includes a selection of over fifty garments drawn from the DVF archives along with artwork, ephemera, fabric swatches, media pieces, collection pieces by other designers, and information on her philanthropic work. The Skirball’s presentation of this exhibition will also include new artifacts that shed light on von Furstenberg’s personal biography as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a war refugee, offering additional perspective on the factors that shaped her life and work.

The exhibition explores many questions, such as: What are the specific features of von Furstenberg's fashion design? Her inspirations? How did her signature creation, the wrap dress, come to epitomize freedom and empowerment for women in the United States and well beyond? How has her personal story, as an immigrant to the United States and the only child of a mother who survived the Holocaust, shaped her creative vision and career as well as her philanthropic work?

Diane von Furstenberg is a fashion designer, founder of her eponymous brand, and the creator of the iconic wrap dress. A philanthropist, she established the DVF Awards with the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation in 2010 to honor and empower women leaders worldwide, an event approaching its 15th anniversary in 2024. An author, she has written several books, including Diane: A Signature Life, The Woman I Wanted to Be, which was translated into eight languages, and Own It: The Secret to Life. The recipient of countless prestigious awards, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019 and she received the Chevalier de la Légion D’Honneur from France in 2020, the Commandeur de l'Ordre de la Couronne from her native Belgium in 2021, and the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award in 2022. Diane currently serves on the boards of Vital Voices and the CFDA. In 2023, she was the subject of Woman Before Fashion, a book published by Rizzoli, which followed the exhibition dedicated to her life and career at Brussels's Fashion & Lace Museum. In 2024, she was the subject of the documentary Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge, which premiered as the opening selection at TriBeCa festival before officially launching on Hulu and Disney+ internationally.

Diane von Furstenberg: Woman Before Fashion
From October 17, 2024
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
www.skirball.org