Make sure you read our previous post (part one) on 5 important 1970s designers. Here are 3 more to add to your list!
Diane von Furstenberg
She needs no introduction but you might not be familiar with her backstory.
Diane Simone Michele Halfin was born in Brussels in 1946 to Jewish parents from Greece and what is modern day Moldova. Her mother was a prisoner at Auschwitz during WWII. Diane attended boarding school in England and studied economics in Geneva. She then moved to Paris and worked as an assistant to a fashion photographers agent. She then apprenticed with textile manufacturer Angelo Ferretti in Italy.
In 1969 she married Prince Egon von Furstenberg of Germany and she became Her Serene Highness Princess Diane of Fürstenberg. A year later, she began designing women’s clothes. She separated from Egon in 1973 after which he also got into fashion design.
Diane moved to New York with jersey dresses she made at Angelo Ferretti’s. She met Diana Vreeland who helped her launch herself at NYFW. She moved into an estate in Connecticut she named Cloudwalk and has lived there ever since.
In 1974, she introduced the jersey wrap dress which became an iconic piece of womens’ fashion for the seventies and has remained relevant to the present day. Her dresses are feminine, flattering to all bodies, versatile, classy and sexy. You could literally wear it to the office and the nightclub. It was a feminine item with the ease, comfort and swagger of menswear. 25,000 dresses were selling each week after the launch with one million having sold by 1976. That year, she was named ‘the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel’ by Newsweek. They were made in almost every colour and pattern.
Diane said of her wrap dress’ success that “It started as a wrap top and skirt, and I thought it would make a simple and sexy dress. I had no idea it would be such a phenomenon.”
Halston said at the time that it “addressed the needs of the working and newly liberated woman.”
Cybill Shepherd wore the DVF wrap dress in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in 1976.
Diane pursued a number of business ventures over the years and relaunched her clothing line and wrap dress in 1997, which gained popularity with a new generation of women.
She married again in 2001.
In 2005, she won the Andre Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2006, she became president of the CFDA. In 2008, she received a star on the Fashion Walk of Fame.
Andre Leon Talley curated an exhibition of her work in 2009 which attracted considerable media attention.
Amy Adams wore three DVF wrap dresses in American Hustle in 2013. The first being the green and white dress that Diane herself was photographed in for the cover of Newsweek in 1976. For a film all about 70s glamour, there was only one designer the lead actress was ever going to wear.
We actually had a 70s DVF dress for sale (below) that was a very similar print and colour scheme to one that Amy wears.
In 2014, the E! network started airing the first season of reality show House of DVF. She was listed as the 68th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes that year.
in 2015, she was included in the Time 100 as an icon by Time magazine.
She designed shirts for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In 2019, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
In 2020, she was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for her contributions to fashion, women's leadership, and philanthropy.
Missoni
“Life is more with colours”, the ethos of Ottavio Missoni.
Missoni was founded by he and his wife Rosita Jelmini in 1953 in Gallarate Italy. Ottavio was a track champion, and he and his trainer produced the Italian Olympic team’s wool tracksuits from a small knitwear workshop in Trieste. Rosita grew up in a family textile business, and was designing household linen and shawls. After setting up their small knitwear shop at their home, the ready-to-wear market made it possible for them to evolve and grow their business. They presented their first collection of multi-coloured striped knit dresses in 1958 at Milan’s top department store, Rinascente. Their designs eschewed the traditional structure of couture, and instead they created the concept of lifestyle dressing. Knitwear wasn’t popular yet in the 50s, so they found more opportunities for innovation. Rosita has always maintained: “I hate luxury in the sense of luxury and luxury brands. For me, real luxury is good attentive service and good and comfortable design".
1958 collection for Rinascente
As they entered the 60s, their knitwear patterns became more elaborate - they created plaids, jacquards, and of course, the famous zig zag motif. They adapted the Raschel knitting machine which was once used by Rosita’s grandparents to make hand-knitted shawls. They created lightweight, bright knit fabrics, using mostly silk and viscose blends, with quilted knits, space-dyed knits, and reversible coats.
Style editor Anna Piaggi was the first to write about Missoni in 1965. She coined the term “Identiknit” and said “to wear a Missoni is to carry about a one-of-a-kind work reflecting the infinite sensations of their intellectual world.”
In 1967, during their runway presentation at Pitti Palace in Florence, the brand caused a bit of a scandal. The models bras were showing through the delicate knit lamé tops, and Rosita told the models to remove the bras. Under the lights and from the flashes of cameras, the tops became transparent. This created a huge controversy and they were not invited back the following year, however it ended up creating so much buzz and the clothes began getting featured in all of the major publications.
In 1970, Bloomingdales opened the first in-store Missoni boutique and Diana Vreeland famously said “Look! Who says there are only colours? There are also shades!”
The Missoni collections offered a new approach to dressing, with the concept of a “put-together” look, that involved mixing and matching all of their patterns from their rainbow stripe to zigzags and waves. By 1975, Vogue included Missoni as one of their top ten most important designers. In 1978, the Missonis had a retrospective in Milan, which was so successful that the Whitney Museum of New York chose to exhibit it as their first ever fashion exhibit.
The Missonis received the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award in 1973, and WWD praised them as the best knitwear designers in the world. The New York Times praised Missoni as the new status symbol of Italian design.
Missoni menswear launched in the 80s, and they expanded to a home collection. They also designed costumes for La Scala Theatre for Donzietti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor.
Their legacy is carried on by their children, who are now creative directors for the brand.
Their archive houses over 7000 designs in silks, cottons, linens, wools, rayons, mohairs and metallics.
We have a great 1980s Missoni mohair sweater in the shop:
*Missoni segment written by Ainslie Lahey
Zuzu Angel
Revolutionary Brazilian fashion designer
Zuleika “Zuzu” was born in Brazil in 1921. She married an American named Norman Angel Jones in 1946 and had a son, Stuart, and daughter, Hildegard. In the 1950s, she worked as a seamstress in Rio before creating her own designs and brand in the 1960s. She had opened up a store in Ipanema by the start of the 70s. She also began to exhibit her creations at American fashion shows. She made a name for herself after harnessing the beauty, joy and richness of Brazilian culture in her work. She incorporated topical birds and flowers in her work and used hand embroidery from the Ceara region of Brazil, Brazilian jewels and hand dyed silk.
Eleanor Lambert described her as “Christian Lacroix before Christian Lacroix”. She was dressing stars like Joan Crawford and Kim Novak. Her collection took over the windows at the 5th Avenue Bergdorf Goodman’s in 1970 and she later started selling her clothing at Neiman Marcus.
Stuart joined the guerrilla group MR8 against the Brazilian dictatorship and was arrested in 1971. He was tortured and killed by the regime. His body was never found. Right after this, Zuzu hosted what the press deemed “the first political fashion show” in protest of the barbaric tortures and ‘disappearances’ taking place in Brazil. She gave up the bright colours and tropical birds for military silhouettes and guns shooting angels. One dress was embroidered with references to military dictatorship; airplanes from which political prisoners were thrown and caged birds (representing the youth) watching on at the horrors unfolding. The collection was called “International Dateline” and was shown in New York.
Zuzu appealed to Ted Kennedy and Henry Kissinger in the States, as her son had American citizenship. She dressed in all black in mourning and took every opportunity to tell the world what was going on in Brazil. Her celebrity clients in the US all came to her defence.
Stuart’s wife died in the custody of the police in 1973.
In 1976, Zuzu was killed in a highly suspicious car accident. Exhaustion from “working too hard on her fashion line” was the official reason given for the cause of the accident. It wasn’t until 2014 that the confirmation came that the military repression regime were involved in her death. She was commemorated in 2015 with a Google Doodle featuring a motif adapted from the prints she used in her designs.
The Zuzu Angel Fashion Institute was set up by her daughter in 1993, which later founded the Brazilian Fashion Academy.
In 2006, the events surrounding Stuart’s death were dramatized in the film ‘Zuzu Angel’ by Sérgio Rezende. Zuzu was played by Patricia Pillar.
