Diane von Furstenberg: Woman In Charge (2024) is an American documentary originally aired on Hulu that focused on the life of iconic fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. The full-length feature covers not only her invention of the wrap dress — one of the most popular garments for women in the 20th century and beyond — but also her early life, the ups and downs of her marriages and careers, and how she is striving to cement her legacy.
The documentary features not only in-depth interviews with the fashion tycoon and feminist icon herself but also features input from her colleagues, biographers, and powerful, consequential women of the past fifty years (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Gloria Steinem amongst them). Von Furstenberg is most often seen with her reddish hair down to shoulder-length and in an array of tasteful, elegant clothes both in flashbacks as well as in her interview segments.
DVF spans the course of von Furstenberg’s life, from before she was born, through her patchwork growing up through Europe and going to boarding school, to her sexual awakenings and marrying a prince (technically making her a princess) and starting a fashion business, all the way through to her titular Women In Charge nonprofit and how she hopes to be remembered.
The documentary is filled with multiple candid interviews, as von Furstenberg speaks openly about her mother being a Holocaust survivor and how that effected her and her child’s life, to her mistakes in business and her personal life (including regretting not catching her child having a rare neuromuscular disease earlier) and her midlife crisis where she fled to the tropics and began an affair.
Early on in the documentary, von Furstenberg speaks directly about her bisexuality:
After the divorce, my mother put me in boarding school in Switzerland. For me, being in boarding school was the best thing ever. There was the excitement of being on my own, and anything can happen. The first year at boarding school, I fell in love and I had my first love with a boy. He was Persian. And then after that, I fell in love with a girl.And it was passion, I loved her. And, uh, I kind of got expelled for that reason.
This declaration is echoed and confirmed by other artists/friends as well as creative directors of her brand, noting her sexual fluidity, that she has never been afraid of her desires and has always been open about her sexuality. Echoes of her queerness also reverberate throughout the doc, figuring into her jet-setting, open marriage with her first husband (who was also bisexual) as well as how she ran her business throughout the decades.
While von Fursternberg is not the only bi superhero in the fashion universe (see Giorgio Armani), Dione von Furstenberg: Woman In Charge is a fascinating look into a consequential woman in the world of haute couture and fashion in general.