Twentieth Century Fashion: 100 Years of Style by Decade & Designer Book

I received this book through a work-subsidized women in business group, and in the introduction to this book, Ms Furstenburg expresses her hope that readers will be inspired by her account, so my expectations were perhaps misguided when I began reading this book. Inspiration for what, I wonder? To be born and marry into enormous privilege? To launch an entrepreneurial career that, despite lack of polish or preparation, succeeds due to elitist connections and a readymade public persona?

The synopsis of the book is frank, though, that DVF's success in large part issues from her utterly un-relatable upbringing attending European boarding schools, marrying into rich royalty, attending fabulous parties, and living the life of a widely known socialite. The book reads like a catalogue of name dropping and self congratulatory anecdotes of her success, determination, and irresistability. If she reproaches herself at all in the book, it's for not pushing hard enough on her business partners when, invariably, they were wrong and she was right. While I'm here for Diane's account of her unending fabulosity, this is not a business inspiration book. This is an underscoring of the number #1 way to succeed in America: be born into privilege.

Diane...she's just like us! Selected quotes:
"My year in Spain was a lonely one...the only acquaintance I made was with a young man...who...I think, though I'm not 100 percent sure, that his name was Felipe Gonzalez Marquez, the man who would become prime minister of Spain in 1982...In contrast to the austerity of my life in Madrid, all of a sudden I was in the midst of all these people who all seemed to know one another and to be effortlessly beautiful and rich. The actress Natalie Wood was part of the group. So was Vladi, a colossal Venezuelan man of Yugoslav origin who fell in love with me [natch] and gave me my first silk Emilio Pucci shirt." (even by accident, my friends are powerful and in love with me!)

"I met Egon later that year at a nightclub in Geneva named Griffin. I wasn't particularly attracted to this handsome blond young man, whose proper German name and title were Prince Eduard Egon von und zu Furstenburg." (I'm so fabulous I had to be wooed by this rich, handsome prince.)

"Many European newspapers covered our wedding, as did Women's Wear Daily and Vogue...After a short honeymoon sailing the fjords of Norway, Egon and I went to a little house on Sardinia's Costa Smeralda that his mother had bought us as a wedding present." (so sweet!)

"For my thirtieth birthday, I had given myself a beautiful sixteen-room family apartment on Fifth Avenue that had belonged to Rodman Rockefeller, Nelson's son." (you know, the tycoon? that's how rich I am.)

"Whenever I need an icon to mark a beginning or a turning point, I buy myself a piece of jewelry. Which is why, soon after the sales to Beecham, I went to [a] prestigious antiques store and bought [list of valuable antique items]...a gesture of appreciation from me to myself." (Because, you know, I'm fabulous.)

"When I bought Cloudwalk [her sweeping Connecticut estate - fancy enough to merit a name like Cloudwalk] only twelve years later, it would be largely because of the trees i could see through the car windows and the river rimming the lawn. I gave the startled agent a deposit of $10,000 without even walking the grounds and never regretted it." (samesies!)

"During the height of the winter season in New York, we averaged four invitations a night, mostly from people we'd never met. I remember having dinner with Salvador Dali and his wife the dark and petite Gala, at the St Regis Hotel and with the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor at the Waldorf Towers. The duke and dutchess were very elegant and perfectly pleasant but did not impress me very much." (the humanity!)

"A great deal of psychology went into the makeup sessions. The trick was to figure out what image and mood a woman wanted to project. If she were a housewife and I sensed she led a fairly dull life..." (Housewives are DULL.)

on her dalliances:
"Ryan [O'Neal] was very handsome and very hot from his roles in Love Story...and...Paper Moon. I was a nervous wreck about having dinner with such a famous superstar....nonetheless, he took me home after dinner to the Beverly Wilshire, where I was staying." (hee)

"I found myself hosting a party in New York City to introduce [Jerry Brown] to influential New Yorkers, such as Barbara Walters, Diana Ross, and Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who was trying to save the city from bankruptcy....the next morning my name was on the front page of The New York Times...It seems...extraordinary to me....that I had enough poise and self-assurance as a twenty-nine-year-old foreign girl [her being a rich, connected socialite notwithstanding] to introduce a candidate for the presidency to these New York luminaries [aka her bosom buddies]. Not only did I find him extremely attractive, I was very intrigued by his life....Jerry and I became friends...I also went with him to the Democratic National Convention in New York. As he counted his votes, I counted the number of my dresses on the delegates. I may have had more dresses than he had votes. My personal relationship with Jerry was never more than a flirtation, really." (I can be as dismissive of partners as I am of housewives!)

"There were lots of flirtations in my life at the time....Jann Wenner had all the Rolling Stone covers hanging in the lobby of his floor below mine..., and I used to tease him about how many flings I had had with his cover subjects....Seduction was very much part of my mood at the time." (Diane always gets what she wants.)

on business strategy:
"I knew absolutely nothing about the business about cosmetics, I just loved the idea. So did a French friend of mine...who had just arrived in New York from Paris with her husband and new baby and was looking for something to do....We had no plan, no thought of anything concrete....we were venturing into this huge industry on instinct, drive, and nerve." (starting businesses is easy! you don't even have to know how! just want it real bad.)

"If Sears was investing so heavily in home design, why not make pretty homes? And why shouldn't I do it? I was dressing so many American women, I reasoned, I might as well designed their homes." (I believe this is called specious reasoning.)

Anywho, the sheer ridiculosity aside, I did enjoy the read for what it was, and I appreciated her, albeit brief, revelations of her family psychology and occasional struggles. And who can blame Ms von Furstenburg for being self-involved and smug - I would be, too!