One thing was clear from the moment Diane von Fusternberg (DVF) walked on stage at the Expedia Partners Conference – she may be married to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s boss Barry Diller but she is clearly her own boss, her own woman – indeed, the woman she wants to be.
That’s the title of her new book by the way, “The Woman I Wanted To Be”. For the fashion icon whose brand has spun a TV reality series, “House of DVF”, when it comes to leadership in business, “it doesn’t matter if you wear a skirt or not”, she told Khosrowshahi (left) who interviewed her at the conference.
DVF however believes there are fundamental differences between male and female business leaders. In a media interview, she said, “Women should not try to be men. Men and women are two entirely different animals. They don’t do anything the same, right? So why should they lead in the same way?”
Summing up her own life for the audience in Las Vegas, she said, “I started young in my 20s, I was inexperienced, I lived the American dream, I rose very fast, very high. Then I sold the company and the buyer ruined it.
The iconic wrap dress (Credit: DVF.com)
“Then I restarted. At 50, I felt 25. We saw young hip girls buying our dresses in vintage shops and we thought, why not.”
A little googling tells me that DVF was born and raised in Belgium and first came to America aged 25. Her iconic “wrap dress” landed her on the cover of Newsweek in 1976. Today, DVF has 116 store locations across 55 countries, reporting sales of more than $200 million annually.
Now that 40 years have passed and “I have a brand that’s established”, she said, “Now it’s about the legacy and finding a management that will take it on and create it to make it relevant again.”
It took her two years to find the right successor. “Barry said to me, don’t look for someone who is already a CEO, look for the next superstar. Soon as he said that, I found him – he’s 41, Italian, young, cute and he cares.”
DVF: If I had known then what I know now, I would have done a business plan.
This April, she announced Paulo Riva, vice president of apparel and visual merchandising at Tory Burch, as the first CEO of the company.
Asked if she would have done anything differently, she said, “If I knew then what I know now, I would have a business plan.”
She said she wrote her memoir “The woman I wanted to be” for other women so that they can become the woman they want to be.
At an internal talk she gave to Expedia Inc’s women leaders, she apparently told her audience that she made dresses to make women feel confident and that every woman should have a go-to dress for days when she is down.
Fashion is undergoing a major disruption, she said, and there’s total product pollution. “More, more, more” of everything, she noted. It’s challenging and speed to market, just as in online travel, is of the essence, she said, citing DVF’s mantra, “We put the customer at the centre of everything we do.”
Her biggest failure? “Not remembering that I have failed.”
On China, she said she grew up loving China. “When we were young, we were told, eat your soup and think of all the little children in China who have nothing to eat. Later it became, the Chinese make everything. Now they buy everything.”
With her eye set on China, she visited every month and developed relationships. Today, she has 21 stores on the mainland.
Speaking about Expedia’s own experience in China, where it had to pull out of eLong, Khosrowshahi asked DVF what lessons she had learnt about doing business there. “They are smart, work hard and they are gamblers.”
Travel is in her blood. “I have travelled everywhere, with money, no money, with comfort, no comfort.” And she singled out Bhutan as the most unique place in the world.
