Diane von Furstenberg Talks Career, Life at AOL’s Makers Conference

Diane von Furstenberg Talks Career, Life at AOL's Makers Conference Kari Hamanaka Diane von Furstenberg took a look back and then looked forward as she offered advice before a group of mostly female executives at AOL's Makers conference. The designer gave a talk Feb. 7 in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., at Makers, which is also the name of AOL's platform aimed at providing women's stories of leadership, offering jokes at times while also seeking to provide guidance based on her own life experiences. Von Furstenberg took the audience back to May 1944, when her mother was 22 and working for the Resistance. She was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, managing to survive it. "My mother always wrote me for my birthday: 'God saved me so that I could give you life and by giving you life, you gave me my life back. You are my torch of freedom.' So this is my heritage." Von Furstenberg went on to detail her own life story including the start of her company. "I never felt glass ceilings because I always ended up working for myself," she said. "For me, being a woman was always an advantage. It's now decades later, only right now, for the first time after this election that I actually felt sexism. I had never felt Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Read More... Fashion 3