The Woman I Wanted to Be (26 page)

In the midst of all this, Catherine Malandrino left us to develop her own line and open her own shop. In came Nathan Jenden in 2001. He stayed with me for almost ten years.

Nathan was English, thirty I think at the time, and had worked with John Galliano and Tommy Hilfiger so he understood both high fashion and Main Street, and he had a little funky side. I liked him from the beginning when I’d asked him to make a presentation (which he promptly lost but found again) and he came back with a sketch of a
girl wearing a crossword puzzle print dress that he titled The Rebel Princess. When he came into my office he was impressed by the numbers of books I had around me, and I was impressed that he’d noticed them.

Nathan brought a lot of feng shui and a little rock ’n’ roll to the clothes and we had a great run together. Nathan was incredibly talented and he was able to create magic during fittings with his aggressive scissors. The first show we did together happened two days before 9/11, which left us all in a state of shock and disarray. His work was so sharp, it managed to keep our numbers up as the city’s economy took a huge hit. That year he came we also opened our first shop in New York next door to the carriage house. It was a tiny boutique you could barely find. Calvin Klein came to the opening of my hidden-away shop and looked at the little dresses. “What a wonderful concept,” he said. Coming from Calvin, who doesn’t like color or print, that was a huge compliment. I was really beginning to feel on a high, even though Gucci had rejected me.

The high continued in Los Angeles at the Academy Awards. Barry and I have always given a Saturday picnic lunch for our friend Graydon Carter, the editor of
Vanity Fair
and host of its longtime Oscar party. A lot of beautiful stars come to our lunch and more and more started arriving in DVF. Now we were definitely gaining ground!

From just a few little dresses, we expanded into a full collection. Twice a year we held formal runway shows at our studio. The names—Working Girl, Under the Volcano, Rebel Princess—reflected the easy, sexy, independent, on-the-go, slightly mischievous woman we designed for. After the successful Dolce Diva fashion show, a light fell and hurt two editors. I felt terribly guilty. I visited Hilary Alexander, the highly respected editor of the
Daily Telegraph
in the hospital and she was an incredible sport. In spite of her injury, she gave us a great
review, but the time had come to join the big leagues and show in the official New York Fashion Week tents.

By 2002 we were in virtually every quality department store, including the grande dame of them all, Bergdorf Goodman. I let my hair go curly again. The Comeback Kid had arrived! In three amazing years, I had gone from losing money, and being advised by my concerned family to shut down, to being very profitable. No one in the industry could believe it. No one expected us to do what we did, and a lot of people were surprised by how we were able to reinvent the brand. Paula and I positioned the business in a very modern way, and here we were—a 1970s business that had successfully transitioned into the twenty-first century with the original centerpiece dress surrounded by new, multigenerational global designs.

We grew as opportunities arose, without a master plan. We opened a shop in Miami in 2003, and the next year in London in a little boutique in Notting Hill, where we were hot, hot, hot. Paris followed the next year, with a spectacular launch. Madonna happened to be in Paris so I sent her an email. She came to the opening with her daughter and a retinue of paparazzi and bought a wrap that she wore at a press conference she gave in Israel. You can’t ask for a better friend or better publicity than that!

Madonna came through again a few years later in Los Angeles at the 2008 Oscar after-party she cohosted with Demi Moore. They surprised me by wearing the same gold wrap dress the stylist Rachel Zoe had ordered for them from my spring fashion show! I really felt that as a designer, I had arrived. I was exhilarated that same night by the commercial American Express ran twice during the Oscars broadcast. They had commissioned Bennett Miller, the Academy Award–nominated director, to do it, and we shot at Cloudwalk and at the studio. Bennett refused to have me read a script; he interviewed me instead, and used
that for the voice-over. That night millions of people heard me say:
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become.
Even though I must have said that sentence many times before, hearing it on TV made me realize its power. That desire is the spirit of my brand.

Over the next few years we opened shops in Tokyo, Jakarta, St. Tropez, Brussels, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Moscow, Madrid, second and third shops in Paris, São Paulo, Beijing. Opening the shop in Antwerp, run by my sister-in-law, was particularly rewarding because it was my first store in Belgium. Axel Vervoordt, the renowned architect and interior designer, gave a big, beautiful dinner for me in his castle; for the first time ever, I felt recognized as a designer in my native country.

Moscow presented another wonderful opportunity. Our collection in 2005 was Russian-inspired and was carried by a shop called Garderobe that invited me to Moscow. They held a little fashion show and dinner for me at Tolstoy’s house on the Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo! After the show, sitting in Tolstoy’s garden under the lilac trees, drinking champagne and giving interviews made me think how thrilled my Russian father would have been.

Another great memory is the visit to Cloudwalk by Roberto Stern, the Brazilian jewelry designer who co-owns and runs the jewelry company H. Stern. I had always wanted to design fine jewelry and had approached his father, Hans, thirty years earlier to collaborate. I loved the quality of their jewelry, but Hans had turned me down.

I had tried again with the son in 2001, but again not much happened. Roberto, I found out later, had been a little bit intimidated by me at our first meetings, but intimidation turned to inspiration during his visit to Cloudwalk, and we entered into a wonderful collaboration. He did a phenomenal job of interpreting my vision and was not afraid
to make the really bold jewelry I love—huge, crystal rings and the heavy, 18-karat yellow-gold Sutra link bracelet that I wear every day, each link engraved with one of my favorite sutras: Harmony, Integrity, Peace, Abundance, Love, Knowledge, Laughter, and Creativity.

The business was growing so rapidly the carriage house on West Twelfth Street filled, then overflowed with staff. The DVF family had outgrown our home and we needed more room.

I bought two historic buildings on the corner of Washington and Fourteenth Street, still in the Meatpacking District. Part of the buildings had been used by John Jacob Astor as housing for his workers. It took three years to build a new six-story headquarters and studio because we were in a historic district, which I’d helped create via the first benefit I’d held on West Twelfth Street six years before. Instead of tearing the buildings down to create my new headquarters, I had to go to the landmarks commission and present a wildly expensive plan to preserve the two brick façades, gut the interior, and build from within. I even created a bedroom, however eccentric it might seem to sleep in a glass tree house on the roof. West Twelfth Street turned out to have been a wise investment, despite all the resistance I’d faced. I’d bought the two carriage houses for $5 million in 1997. I sold them in 2003 for $20 million.

All this growth was boosting my confidence, which is vital to how you view opportunities. My self-assurance was reinforced in 2005 when I received the CFDA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, then again when the next year I was elected president of the CFDA. Recognition by peers is the most valid recognition, and without it I doubt I would have undertaken the most audacious challenge of all, China.

“I
want to be “known in China.” These words topped my New Year’s Resolutions on the eve of 2010, and I take resolutions seriously
since New Year’s Eve is also my birthday. It was a huge goal, of course, but it was a goal to make happen.

I have always been fascinated with China. I had been there many times, starting in 1989 when there were barely any cars in the streets. I had made friends in Beijing and Shanghai over the years: artists, writers, businesspeople. Suddenly everybody was looking at China as a great business opportunity, but I didn’t want to be just another opportunistic brand. I wanted to understand their culture as well as explain my own. By being the face of my brand from the beginning, I’d always had a relationship with my customers, an understanding, and I wanted to do the same in China.

I had a way: the exhibit of my work, life, and art that I’d already mounted in Moscow and São Paulo to introduce myself to the markets there. Bill Katz, who designs exhibitions and interiors and is a longtime friend, suggested an extraordinary venue: Pace Beijing, the largest privately owned art gallery in the world. Arne Glimcher, the gallery’s owner, enthusiastically agreed to host the show.

I was so excited. Others were not. Paula was against my China campaign; by this time Nathan had left and Yvan Mispelaere had joined as creative director. There was a lot to do, and he needed to be fully briefed and integrated into the company. Furthermore, she argued—legitimately—that it was premature to do an exhibition in China. Our presence in mainland China was limited to two stores in Beijing and one in Shanghai, and from a business perspective, mounting the exhibit wouldn’t justify the huge commitment of money, time, and effort from the company. “Wait a few years until we’re better established in China,” Paula said. But my instinct told me the timing was right and I insisted on pressing ahead. The opening for the six-week exhibition was set for April 4, 2011.

I explained the Beijing exhibition to friends at a dinner given for
me in Shanghai by Pearl Lam, the flamboyant art dealer. “What about Shanghai?” they asked. They were eager for me to do something in their city. “Give a ball,” suggested Wendi Deng Murdoch, then the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. “No one in China gives a ball.” My Chinese friends loved the idea and so did I. “We’ll call it the Red Ball,” I decided.

The next day I visited the celebrated artist Zhang Huan in his cavernous pipe-factory-turned-studio in an industrial suburb of Shanghai. From the first moment, I knew it would be the perfect venue for a ball—much more interesting than any grand hotel. Zhang loved the idea, which in turn delighted the Shanghainese, who have an informal rivalry with their counterparts in Beijing. The Red Ball would be March 31, four days before the opening of the retrospective.

We expected seven hundred guests at the ball but more than a thousand came. It was a who’s who of Chinese talent, including the Academy Award–winning composer Tan Dun (
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
), the multi-award-winning actress Zhang Ziyi (
Crouching Tiger, 2046
), China’s beautiful top international model Du Juan, and many, many others. I wore a sequined gown with the Chinese character for love on the bodice, and I really did love that spectacular evening. So did the hordes of Chinese press. My Chinese partners, David and Linda Ting and Michael and Jess Wang, were ecstatic.

People in China are still talking about the DVF Red Ball, I am told by my friend Hung Huang, the highly influential author, blogger, the founder of the magazine
iLook
and the first Chinese designer store, BNC. Scores of masked men dressed in black manipulating red laser beams around the thirty-foot-high studio, Zhang Huan’s Ming dynasty temple floating on red mist, Jin Xing’s modern dance troupe snapping giant red fans in the temple and performing to kettle drums, the after-dinner
disco amid spinning lights and a red glitter floor—all brilliantly designed by my friend Alex de Betak, the magician who designs the sets of my fashion shows.

I was so proud that night, especially because my entire family was with me: children and grandchildren, cousins, and Philippe who came from Belgium with his family. “What do you like best about your job, Didi?” Tatiana’s daughter, Antonia, had asked me the day before the Red Ball. “What I like best about my job is the fact that I can dream of something and make it happen,” I replied. That trip was even more special because Tatiana shot the DVF ad campaign and a spectacular film, both titled “Rendezvous,” at Zhang Huan’s studio in Shanghai.

Four days after the ball, a thousand people came to the opening at Pace Beijing. Chinese people were fascinated by my journey in New York in the seventies and the Andy Warhol portraits, such a contrast to where China was in the 1970s. I also commissioned four new portraits by leading Chinese artists, Arne Glimcher’s idea.

Each time I walk into my office and see the ash painting Zhang Huan did of me, or into my library at Cloudwalk, where there’s a portrait by Li Songsong, I’m glad I followed my instinct; they are masterpieces. I also achieved my New Year’s Resolution. We have twenty-one stores in China and plans to open fourteen more in the next four years. And I am certainly “known.” When I started working on the China project, I had no followers on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. After the Red Ball and the exhibition, the numbers grew to three hundred thousand. As I write this, my followers have grown to over two million!

We were all on a high when we left China. We had succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, and the DVF team had performed magnificently. Little did I know that within three years, we’d be mounting
the exhibition yet again, this time in Los Angeles. It would be different though. I’d pushed alone against my team’s resistance to make the China campaign happen. When we returned to New York, I realized making those solo decisions was a bad habit. So many things had to change. It was time for the business to enter a third phase, a phase I would call The New Era. The change was not easy for any of us.

6

THE NEW ERA

T
he
realization had begun before the trip to China. Change, both exciting and painful, was in the air. Paula and I had been like Thelma and Louise, hurtling cross-country beautifully for ten years. We were the pretty girls on the block. The brand was young again, a shining star in fifty-five countries. We had opened fifty of our own shops. We had brought the business from nothing to $200 million in sales. Now what?