a very stylish Cannonball

I’m so thankful to have completed my (very first) Cannonball with a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

I am in the fashion “industry” which is fancy talk for “I have a degree in fashion merchandising but really I sell high end dresses to the discerning women of Dallas.” I actually work at a store that sells Diane Von Furstenberg’s line and own a few of her pieces, I’m a fan of her jersey knits and bold prints. I knew she married a prince and came to prevalence in the ’70s but I didn’t know how many ups and downs she’d had over the last 40 years. Her memoir details her pretty extraordinary life, and has lots of great (color) pictures!

You don’t have to be a fashionista to appreciate The Woman I Wanted to Be. Diane von Furstenberg begins her memoir as a love letter to her mother, a survivor of 2 concentration camps during WW2, who always told her daughter that “God has saved [her] life so that [she] could give [Diane] life.”

My birth was her triumph. She was not supposed to survive; I was not supposed to be born. We proved them wrong. We both won the day I was born.

Diane has had two great loves her in life: her first husband Prince Egon von Furstenberg and her long time love Barry Diller. She details her relationship with both, as well as a few other men in between.  She had two children with von Furstenberg  (and traded on his famous pedigree while she was trying to break into the fashion industry) who she gushes about endlessly. She mentions her trials and triumphs in the fashion industry but it’s not the focus- it’s what has allowed her to do all the things she has done in her life. And she has done a lot.

She was far more interesting than I could have imagined. I want to be her friend, or a fly on her wall.