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[MUSIC] [APPLAUSE] >> Hello, hello.
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>> Hi, so I heard that the last time that you were here on campus that you said that if you had, had a Stanford MBA, you would rule the world.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I wish I could have gotten in.
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Yes, I think that to be in Stanford is such an incredible, lucky thing.
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And then I was told, what did the dean just say?
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Who is it that just said that it was very important to also be rounded? >> Well rounded, right.
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Well, you don't have a Stanford MBA. >> No.
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>> And you basically rule the world.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Do you think I should drop out?
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>> [LAUGH] >> Well- >> It doesn't look like she's nervous, right?
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>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> So DVF, you started your career very early on in working as an apprentice in a factory.
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Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and if you really wanted to be a fashion designer growing up? >> I really didn't.
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When I talk to young people, I always say, unless you have a real vocation, like you know you want to be an actress, or you know you want to be a pianist, or something, or an engineer, you don't know what you're going to do.
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And then when you start life, there are all theses doors, and which door is going to be my door, and which door are you going to push?
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And it's not always the most glamorous door that will give you the most glamorous life.
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I mean, when I met this Italian man and he invited me to come and do an internship, well, he had a little crush on me.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And when he invited me to go over and to watch what he was doing.
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I mean, the last thing I was going to think is that, that man and that factory would be the most important thing in my life.
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So I think it's very important to be very open and to be curious and to pay attention, and to kind of follow your heart and follow what the universe tells you.
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All I knew is that I didn't know what I wanted to do.
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I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.
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I wanted to be a woman who could have a man's life in a woman's body.
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I wanted to be able to pay my bills.
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I wanted to be able to do the same thing as a man did, but I didn't know how.
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Then I found a way, and I was very lucky because it happened for me very quickly as it does now in today's world.
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I mean, so many millenniums make it so early.
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And I mean at the time, there weren't that many but I was one of them and I was lucky.
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So to that point, what the audience may not know at that time was that you were also a princess and not a Sleeping Beauty princess, but a literal princess.
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>> When I married a prince. >> You married a prince.
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>> [LAUGH] >> It was a shortcut.
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>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> But you continued working, so why was that?
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>> Yes, and I married pregnant, too, so that was- >> [LAUGH] I was going to leave out that part. >> [LAUGH] No, why?
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I mean, it's one of those things.
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I was engaged, okay, so it's not something.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But- >> Why was it so important for you to continue working, though, when you really financially- >> No, no, no, I was just starting but I mean, I didn't want my financial independence to come from my father, my husband.
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I wanted to do it on my own. And I did.
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It also made my marriage not survive.
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You have to say the things as they are.
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At some point I had to choose and I made a choice.
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Buthe gave me two beautiful children, and we stayed friends forever, and life goes on.
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>> I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about your business.
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When you started your career, you created a very famous wrap dress.
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And here at the GSB we talk a lot about product market fit, about creating products that satisfy a particular consumer need.
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And looking at the audience, it looks like there's several people with a wrap dress on now.
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If you have a DBF dress on, can you stand up?
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>> [APPLAUSE] >> I think you found product market fit.
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[LAUGH] This dress has been relevant for over 40 years.
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What do you think that you saw in the market that other people were missing? >> My god.
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It didn't happen like that at all.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I mean, at all.
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I mean, okay, I was working with this man.
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This man had a print factory, a printing plant. It was in Como, Italy.
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Como, Italy is basically the end of the Silk Road, right?
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The Silk Road starts from China, you go through all the thing, you go through, and then you end up in Como.
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In Como, there were all the silk manufacturers.
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And therefore, around them, there was an industry.
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It was all the illustrators and painters and artists that would sell their drawings and their paintings to those people in order to make beautiful prints, scarves and so on. >> This is her print. >> This is a print.
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And so this man, so that's what I learned first.
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He would go there and look and this, and so they buy an artwork and then you put it in repeat and then you talk to the colorist.
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And Italy at the end after the war was very industrial, Italy was just beginning.
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And so there were these very, very small factories that were being born and they were families, and these people were colorists, and their grandfather was colorist, and the great grandfather.
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So it was very like that, and this one made handbags.
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So anyway this man had a printing factory. So I learned about that.
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Because it was a successful printing factory, it would make all scarves for Gucci and Ferragamo and people like that.
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He then needed more room.
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Because he needed more room, he bought the factory next door, for the walls.
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When he went in, he saw all these machines that weren't doing anything.
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Because the people who had the factory before were making stockings.
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Now, you'll too young, you don't know what this fashion is.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But starting is what people wore before they wear pantyhose, right?
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They were wearing stockings with little garter band and so, stockings was over so these people went out of business.
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And so this man looked at these machines he said, what else could I do with these machines?
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Because they were tubular knitting machines.
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And so he called in all the young people, DuPont and people like that and they tried this machine with a thicker yarn and that's how they came up with the jersey fabric.
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And there are two ways, there are two types of fabric, the fabrics that are woven and the fabrics that are knitted.
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Jersey fabric is a knitted fabric, it's what t-shirts are made of.
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At the time, t-shirts, nobody would wear t-shirts, except mens as underwear, and maybe sailors, but nobody else wore t-shirts.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Nobody else wore a t-shirt.
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Until it was a very famous movie star called Brigitte Bardot and she lived in this little port called San Tropez.
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And there was a little shop there when they started to dye the t-shirts in all colors.
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And there was Brigitte Bardot looking so beautiful and so harsh, with these colored T-shirt that had a little central peace signal on it and blue jeans and barefoot, and that's when T-shirts started. So Mr.
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Faraday, my Italian man, started to make T-shirts and then because he had a printing factory, printed T-shirts.
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And I was there when all of this was happening, and then he bought another factory that used to make night gowns because they had very thin needles so that he could wove this fabric.
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Okay, all that is, I didn't think any of this would ever be important in all my life.
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That year my mother gave me a ticket, an airline ticket to go to New York to visit my boyfriend.
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My boyfriend, the prince.
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>> [LAUGH] >> So, I went to New York to see my boyfriend, the prince.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Who was very good-looking, very handsome, he had everything.
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And you can imagine all the girls in New York wanted to marry him.
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, so they didn't like when I showed up.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But I was invited everywhere and there were all these young designers who wanted me to wear their clothes.
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And one was called Holsten and Steven Burrow and all these generation Giorgio Sant' Angelo.
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This generation of young designers, and we didn't have clothes like that in Europe and so on.
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So when I went back, because after six weeks of visiting Egon, I went back to Italy, went back to the factory.
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At that time I walked into the factory and I just had a vision, I said, there's something I can do here.
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I can make samples and I will try to go and sell them in America and that's what happened.
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I started to stay late at night and work with a sample maker, and the puzzle maker, grab any fabric that was left over on the floor, and make a few samples.
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Then Egon came back on his way, he was stopping for one bank, the next year I was going to go to, let's ask, so we had to summer off, so he on the way to Asia, he stopped in Rome.
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We met in Rome, we got engaged and then he went on, and I went back to the factory.
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And I'm going back to the factory, and with this Italian man who's driving the yellow Lamborghini, and we go from factory to factory, and this and that.
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And one day he drops me in Milan and I'm feeling so dizzy, because I think it's a Lamborghini and I fainted in the street.
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And I remember Italian people saying, [FOREIGN], [FOREIGN] she's dead and I think.
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>> [LAUGH] >> I was not dead, but it was pregnant.
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>> [LAUGH] >> So, [LAUGH].
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>> [APPLAUSE] >> [LAUGH] >> So, that's what happened.
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So then, all of a sudden, my God, I can't believe it, I'm pregnant with this most eligible man in Europe.
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Everybody's going to think I did it on purpose and I can't, I can't, this is terrible.
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So I went to Geneva, I went to see my mother, I said I can't I mean this is not.
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My mother said you're crazy anyway, you're engaged, you have to let him know blah blah blah.
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Make the story short, >> [LAUGH] >> The wrap dress.
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>> I said don't feel obliged, he said no, no no we're going to organize the wedding for 15th of July.
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So at first I'm like how dare you, but okay, fine, so we get married.
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So, I go back to the factory and I said listen, I am pregnant, I'm getting married, and I'm moving to New York.
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Will you please allow me to make some samples from the factory?
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And that's what I did, and that's how I made my first dresses.
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And they were basically t-shirt dresses and shirts dresses and I had no idea and no experience.
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Except I was 22 and I was cute so I knew what I wanted to wear and that's what happened.
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>> But this happened in the 70s and this was the heart of the Women's Liberation Movement.
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>> Well then I came here and Egon has introduced me to Diana Vreeland blah blah blah.
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Anyway, so I yes, and then this dress, this, so for two years I had two children in 13 months.
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So I had one child, and then I was pregnant again, and in between back and forth to go to Italy and I had miserable little orders 15 pieces 55 pieces.
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And the Italian men would say, " What are you crazy, I don't have a sample room I have a factory."
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I said, " Please, please, please trust me, have faith in me.
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So I would come back with more samples and like that for two years.
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And I had a little wrap top and the little wrap top was basically what dancers, ballerinas wear to keep warm, in French it's called cache coeur and it's like hides heart.
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By the way it's also called HUb after fairy, which is wallet, which it ended up filling my wallet.
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>> [LAUGH] >> So at first it was a little top with a matching skirt and that did really, really well.
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And then I said well we have to why don't we make it into a dress, and that was a dress.
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And then I started I was 22 by the time I was 26 and seven we were making 25,000 dresses a week. >> Wow >> And that's 50.
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000 sleeves, and that's a lot.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And then I was living this American dream and. >> I read that a dress.
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>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> But what I'm trying to say is that people say I made the dress, yes I made the dress but really the dress made me.
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Because thanks to this dress, I became more confident.
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I was going around women, wrapping them, and I was feeling confident, so I was sharing my confidence, and I was selling my confidence.
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And then it was a time of liberation.
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I mean if you were young in the 70's, it was a very nice time to be young, because it was somewhere between the pill and AIDs, you figure it out.
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>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] And so, it was a very nice time to be young.
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>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Okay, well, [LAUGH] So I read that you named your first dress Angela, after the [CROSSTALK] >> Angela Davis, yeah, you know why?
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Funny, where you read that?
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>> [LAUGH] >> No, there was- >> I do my research.
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>> There was a dress that had stripes.
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And, I mean it wasn't a very good reason why I called in Angela Davis, because she had been arrested, and it's prescribed.
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>> But what were you hoping I think it was a really bold move to name your dress after the civil rights act.
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>> Yeah but nobody knew, I don't even know how you know [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> But by the way I loved Angela Davis, she was so beautiful, I mean she was strong.
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Yes, there were all these women that poped out that this time there was Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem, and it was a wonderful, I mean actually, okay, I was a princess, right?
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Because I had married a prince, but actually at the time this one Gloria Steinem invented the word Ms, M-S, right? So you were either Ms. or Mrs.
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you were Ms, and I actually traded my title of princess to be a Ms.
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>> [APPLAUSE] >> Because I'm a feminist. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> [LAUGH] >> Sorry.
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>> Well, its kind of in fashion to be a feminist again, it went away for awhile.
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>> [LAUGH] >> So there's a movement that's happening right now with women, and a lot that has come up aground, the Me Too movement, the Times Up movement.
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From your experience with the Women's Separation Movement in the 70s to what's happening now, what do you think are the parallels?
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Or what do you think are the differences?
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And how do you think that we're fighting for in extension of something, the same thing, how do you think about it?
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>> So when I was young, we were feminists because we wanted to have equality, and in many ways. And so that was that.
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But at the time, I grew up that if you were a woman you had your period and you would get groped, that's just it. That would happen.
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Men, your bosses would treat you somehow like meat, and you just had to defend yourself the best way you could.
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But it was part of the DNA of being a woman.
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So, and I was lucky because first of all I only had three bosses, and they were all before I was 22.
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And also because then I had my own business, and so I didn't have a boss.
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And then I also was in the fashion industry where women were actually, it was easier for a woman to.
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But I'm thinking, now all these other women who had jobs with male bosses who constantly will touch them and do that.
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And the fact that they didn't want to lose their jobs because they have children, because you don't want to lose your job.
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You like your job, you study for your job, you have a good job, and then you have this pig as a boss.
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And how'd you deal with it?
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And so, I think what happened recently is great.
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I think that it's one step ahead, and that man cannot treat us as meat.
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As we can't treat them as something else, whatever it is.
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But it's a good thing, it's a very good thing.
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And as women and as mothers I think that it's our responsibility to raise our sons so that they respect women.
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But it's so much ingrained in society, but eventually it's I don't know.
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My mother always raised me like it was an advantage to be a woman, so I felt that it was an advantage.
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But maybe I was very privileged, maybe I had good legs, who knows?
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But the truth is that I have never met a woman who is not strong, all women are strong.
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But, a brother, a father, a religion, or very often themselves, ourselves, we don't want to show our strength, because we want our men to feel strong and blah, blah, blah, and powerful and all of that, which is fine.
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But then there's a tragedy, there's a fire, there's something, and the woman gets one child, then the other child, and the jewelry, and bam, boom, off the door.
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And you see that at the end of the time of tragedy, the woman strength comes out and she takes over.
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So, I think it's important for women to know inside of them that they are strong.
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And it is their decision to show it or not to show it.
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But what is the most important thing is that they know it inside themselves.
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>> I think it's an interesting concept to talk about the privilege that may be associated with some women in their careers, as early as to not having to deal with that of harassment.
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And I know you had three bosses before you were 22, right?
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I think there are a lot of women in a lot of different industries that don't have that privilege. >> That's right.
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>> So, particularly in the fashion industry, when you have an industry that the success is so contingent on young women, young models.
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For your role as the CDFA President, which is the Council of the Fashion Designers of America, how do you think about protecting these young women?
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>> What we do, we have rules, we have all kinds of things that we set up, and it is incredibly important.
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Because I mean, I did try to be a model completely not successful, but I mean that is all about rejections.
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I mean, it's just the worst thing To try to want to be a model because it's the worst.
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But no, as the CMDA, we are making rules, and we're doing this more and more.
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But it's also- >> And I think it's also interesting for the fashion industry in particular, because women are the prime consumers- >> Right, right.
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>> Most of the consumers.
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And you do have a number of very powerful women within that industry.
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But there still seems to be this power dynamic where women are still subjected to a lot of the same things that they are in other industries, and why do you think that is?
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>> Because we're stronger.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Listen, women have to stick together, but the first thing is they have to feel strong women themselves.
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And they just have to, we have to deal with what we have to deal, but together we have to make sure that we support each other and industries have to support.
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And I think that all the things, the Me Too and Tme's up as really, really being helpful.
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And it is a different time, you know?
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And we have to make sure that, that doesn't go away..
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>> I know you spend a lot of your time and your resources, whether social or financial, on empowering women, on women's empowerment.
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And that you created the DVF awards not long ago.
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Can you tell us a bit about that?
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>> Well, next year is going to be the 10th anniversary, yeah.
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Yes, it's actually my son who said, you do so much for women, you should really reward them and give them money and do a prize.
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And then one day it will be like a Nobel Prize.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And so we started together when I got involved in creating the women's conference with Tina Brown.
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And then at that time I started this prize.
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And it was really thinking about my mother.
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My mother was a survivor of Auschwitz.
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She survived, and so it's for women who have the strength to fight, the courage to survive, and the leadership to inspire.
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And the women we have given awards to are just remarkable, most of them are not that well known but they've done an incredible work.
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And it's been wonderful, wonderful.
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And then you create a family over ten years, and then you see what they got and usually they got other prices after, and then you get to know them.
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And I think that what is most important is, I believe in the chain of love.
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If you pay attention to people and you know them, and then you help them.
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I really do believe in that.
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I mean, I really believe, you see, now I was very successful, very young.
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Blah, blah, blah, I created a company.
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Obviously when you create something it went up, it went down, it had many generations.
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But now I have a woman CEO that I think is going to really take the company to the new worldm, the new digital world.
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And so what I want to do for the rest of my life now that I am 70 years old is the fact that I want to use, because when you are successful, two things happen.
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One, you can pay your bills, and two, you have a voice.
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And when you have a voice, its important, it's your duty, but it's also a gift and a privilege to use your voice for people who have no voice.
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And that voicing and that being able to share the experience that I had, because I may be 70 but I really should be 140, >> [LAUGH] >> For how much I have lived and the different people I've met and the different circumstances and all of that.
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To be able to share that, and to share my experience, and my knowledge, and all of that.
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And so that's what I would like to do for the rest of my life.
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And I know you all study business, and you're all super smart, and everything else.
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And so what I would like to be able to tell people is that, women mostly, and this is very much of a women's audience, so the other day I spoke to, I walked in there, they were all male engineers.
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>> I see a couple of men.
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>> I said, it's not going to go well mem, but it did very well.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Anyway, and is my big umbrella now.
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My big umbrella is design your life, right?
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And so because I want to do podcast and I want to do speaking engagements and all of that, I wanted this summer, I said, okay, I have to structure.
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What does it mean to design in your life, right? What does it mean?
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And so because I was in Sicily, I drew a Greek temple, and on top of the roof I wrote design your life.
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And then I put the pillars.
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And these are the pillars that I came up with.
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The first pillar, the most important pillar we all have is our character.
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Because you could lose everything, you could lose your health, you could lose your wealth, you could lose your children, you could lose everything.
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But you never lose your character, even under torture.
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And what does character really mean?
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Character's really about the relationship you have with yourself.
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And to have a relationship with yourself is hard because it means you have to be demanding.
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You have to be disciplined.
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You have to do all of these things, but you have yourself as a refuge, as a shelter.
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And no matter what happens, you always have yourself.
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And if you have that, any other relationship is a plus and not a must.
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And there is nothing less attractive than being needy.
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So character is really the pillar number one.
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And in order to, you practice it everyday, it's like plumbing, or pruning trees.
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It's all the time you need to work at it.
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You need to have time, a little bit of solitude, a little bit of silence, a little bit of things so that you know that somehow you could rely on yourself. Pillar number one.
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That's why I say the first, number one lesson in life is the most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself.
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Pillar number two is your body and your mind, your brain.
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Our body, we have so much power on our body. We can exercise it. We can forget about it. We can modify the shape.
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And mind, it's only recently that I realized, we have this incredible computer inside.
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I can speak three languages at the same time, and drive and drink and all of that at the same time.
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And my mind is making me do all that.
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I mean, how does that work? >> It's amazing.
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>> I mean that is just amazing, but we have to pay attention to it.
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And not take stupid drugs that will modify our brain, anyway- >> You mean like taking care of it physically?
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>> Yes, so one, two, three, heart, heart.
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Heart is a muscle, right, that pumps the blood and creates oxygen.
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So heart is life, life is love.
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Love is compassion, is emotion, and it's about to be a human, a human being.
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I know everybody talks about artificial intelligence and all of these things, but I really do think that the only way we can save humanity is by being humans.
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And I think that there's going to be, I hear it, I hear a lot of people who all of a sudden think about being kind and doing things to be human.
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And I think- >> Does that mean empathy to you?
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>> Yes, and it means paying attention to the next person, and yeah, it's being human.
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All of sudden being human and having a heart.
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I think that's the next trend, hopefully.
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I mean we have to compete against whatever else is happening.
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So, one, two, three, four, pillar number four is purpose.
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And purpose is work, is therefore work is your independence, your identity, it's your expression, it's who you are in society.
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So I know you worry a lot about that here, so I shouldn't talk about it anymore.
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And one purpose and you have- >> [INAUDIBLE] >> And then you have what I do which is aesthetics, what you wear, how you surround yourself, the power of color, all of that.
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And that's what I thought my five pillars were.
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And then two weeks ago I was talking to my 17 year old grandson and he said, you forgot nature.
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And I thought, yeah, that's right, I forgot nature.
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So we added another pillar.
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And because it was six, and I like odd numbers, I had to add another, seven.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And my pillar number seven was rituals.
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We do things every day that we don't even think about.
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Many years ago I did three coffee table books, they were photography books.
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And one was called The Bed, the Bath, and the Table.
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And the bed, if you think about it, people, we throw ourselves in the bed without thinking and we go and sleep in a messy bed.
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But look at what the bed, I mean how important, we're conceived in a bed, we make love in a bed, we're sick in a bed, we die in a bed.
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I mean so the ritual of the bed and the ritual of the table, what to eat and how to eat and the pleasure of that.
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I think there's a whole ritualist things that we do.
35:17
Or even the bathroom, the privacy of the bathroom and whatever.
35:22
So all of this is the design of your life.
35:27
And does that sound interesting to you? >> Yes. >> Why?
35:31
>> [APPLAUSE] >> [LAUGH] >> [APPLAUSE] >> [LAUGH] >> Why?
35:35
>> [LAUGH] >> I mean I don't know, I mean I said it to somebody and they said, well that's very generic.
35:43
>> [LAUGH] >> I say, yeah, it's generic, but what isn't generic?
35:47
>> I think what isn't generic is the experience that your mother had, and the influence that she's had on you as a result of her surviving Auschwitz.
36:01
You talked about that a lot in your book, The Woman I Wanted To Be.
36:05
And I would love to know how that that influenced the woman that you wanted to be?
36:17
>> All right, so in order to describe my mother, imagine yourself in 1944, in Belgium, occupied Belgium by German.
36:29
This 22 year old girl gets arrested, deported, and sent to labor camps in Auschwitz.
36:40
It was, because it was so late, I mean she stayed there for a while and then there was the famous death march and they went to another camp and then another camp.
36:52
And 13 months later she ended up in this third camp, and by then she was in pretty bad shape.
36:59
And one morning they woke up and the Germans had left, and then the Russian came and raped them and then whatever.
37:08
And then they left, and then the Americans came.
37:11
And she was in a very bad state, she couldn't move.
37:15
She was brought to a hospital, she weighed 49 pounds.
37:20
And then so they made her fill a questionnaire.
37:25
The only reason I know that is because the Holocaust Museum who I help, that I help, did a huge research on both my parents and sent me all this information.
37:37
And this questionnaire comes in a way, say name, first name, second name, where you came from, and then state of health.
37:48
And even though she couldn't have moved she wrote excellent health.
37:52
And that explains everything.
37:56
No matter what she always told me, no matter what happens, you can never be a victim.
38:03
And she survived, she gained the weight back, her fiance came back from Switzerland, they got married.
38:12
The doctor says, you have to wait three to five years before you have a child because you won't make it and the child won't be normal.
38:19
And nine months later I was born and I was not normal.
38:22
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> So my mother used to say to me, God saved me so that I could save, so that I could give you life.
38:38
By giving you life, you gave me my life back, you are my total freedom.
38:43
So I was raised with a lot of risk, I was supposed to be a total freedom, at the age of one I had to speak in public, my birthday and I always had to memorize.
38:56
My mother was a tiger mom.
38:59
She was tough, and she would not allow me to be afraid.
39:04
If I was afraid of the dog, she would lock me in the dog closet.
39:08
Today she would be arrested.
39:09
>> [LAUGH] >> And, but after ten minutes you realize that there's no reason to be afraid.
39:17
And so obviously I'm very much a result of my mother.
39:26
So never be a victim, doesn't matter what happened, blah, blah, blah, this and that, and that formed me.
39:33
But when you have a very strong mother, it's you have to wait until she's gone for you to accept it.
39:40
>> So we're going to do a quick lightning round.
39:43
We have a couple minutes left.
39:45
I would love for you to finish this sentence, these sentences.
39:49
I feel most confident when- >> I feel most confident when, When I speak to a nice crowd.
40:03
>> [LAUGH] >> What angers me most is- >> I don't get angry very quickly.
40:10
What angers me most is when I witness lies.
40:18
>> The thing people would be surprised to learn about me is?
40:22
>> The things that people would be surprised to learn about me is that, >> Probably- >> [LAUGH] >> You certainly do [LAUGH].
40:37
>> [LAUGH] >> My super power is?
40:44
>> My super power is my magic wand which I use every day when I try to, my first e-mail of the day, I try tried to do something that doesn't benefit me.
41:02
And I will introduce one person to another person, I don't have to leave a message, I don't have to speak, all I have to do is write it perfectly and explain everything well, and I may have changed that person's life.
41:20
>> Most important advice I can give for this audience is?
41:25
>> Most important advice I can give is the one I said before, is that the most important relationship you have is the one you have with yourself. >> [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]