Those who know and love Diane von Furstenberg – and we all do – will tell you that any time spent with her is filled with love, life, delectable stories, and delicious food. Take last Wednesday, when von Furstenberg invited friends and fashion family to lunch at her legendary DVF headquarters in the Meatpacking District. The occasion: kicking off next year’s 50^th anniversary of the Wrap dress together with her new Rizzoli book, “Woman Before Fashion.”

Von Furstenberg gathered some friends who played as much as role in shaping New York City as she did since she first arrived her in the early 1970s to join her boyfriend and, later, husband Egon von Furstenberg. Among the guests were Fran Lebowitz, Stephen Burrows, Bob Colacello, and Pat Cleveland, who, like others, studied the gallery display of wrap dresses and the timeline of von Furstenberg’s successes.

“I wanted to celebrate this with people that were very important to me from the beginning,” she said, before sharing the story of her personal journey and that of the dress that changed the way women dress .

“I came to New York, and my boyfriend was Prince Egon von Furstenberg…attractive, good-looking, rich…every girl in America wanted to marry him, and they were like, who is this girl coming in and disturbing,” she recalled. “In New York I discovered a completely different fashion from what was happening in Europe. I discovered Stephen Burrows and Giorgio di Sant Angelo, and I can say that Stephen and Giorgio, together with a twist of Pucci, gave me the inspiration to go in business.”

An introduction to Diana Vreeland soon followed, and, as von Furstenberg put it, “I went and was thrown into Ms. Vreeland’s office. They gave me a rack. I had a suitcase and I put my clothes on the rack.  All of  a sudden walks this woman…black hair…red lipstick…She looked at me and the first thing she said was, ‘Chin up, up.’”

Wasting no time, Vreeland asked two young women in in the office – Pat Cleveland and Loulou de la Falaise – to try on the clothes. Talk about a fashion moment. She then sat down with Kezia Keeble, Ms. Vreeland’s assistant at the time and another fashion force gone too soon, who advised and then helped her to book a hotel room for market, get her name on the Fashion Calendar and take a small ad in Women’s Wear Daily. “A friend took the picture with the dress on the white cube,” she recalled. The ad for WWD was small and the white cube was so big. I didn’t know what to do so I wrote on the photo, ‘Feel like a Woman, Wear a Dress.’ Diana featured one of the dresses in Vogue; It was Pat Cleveland photographed by Irvin Penn,  and Pat’s first photo in Vogue.”

It was as fabulous, as was her recollections of a birthday party she gave for Colacello’s 30^th birthday with a 19-year old pre-fame Madonna; of Lebowitz, the “most glamourous, most iconic person in New York,” and more.

As for the 50^th anniversary celebration of the Wrap dress and the new book, as well as the “Woman Before Fashion” exhibition on the Fashion & Lace Museum in Brussels, the city she was born and raised, it all came together while taking stock of her archive during Covid.

“Since I had not studied fashion, I was too shy to say I was a designer,” von Furstenberg. “I used to say I am a woman who makes clothes for other women, and only after I got a Lifetime Achievement award from the CFDA, I decided, ‘okay I am a designer.’”

The moment was a seductive celebration of the past, present, and future. Congratulations, Diane.