PRINCE EGON von FURSTENBERG (ne Eduard Egon Peter Paul Giovanni Prinz zu Fürstenberg) was born on this date (d: 6/11/2004); Furstenberg was a socialite, banker, fashion and interior designer, and a member of the former German princely family of Fürstenberg.
While studying at a university, he met 1965 fellow student Diane Simone Michelle Halfin, a Belgian-born Jewish woman of Romanian-Greek descent and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. They married in July 1969, at Montfort-l’Amaury, Yvelines, France. The new Princess Diane von Fürstenberg was pregnant, and Egon’s father, who objected to his son marrying a Jew, and other von Fürstenberg family members attended the wedding ceremony but boycotted the reception.
His wife opened her fashion house in New York at Egon’s urging, creating an eventually iconic wrap dress, a career as designer that pre-dated and arguably eclipsed Egon’s. Fürstenberg began his career as a buyer for Macy’s, taking night classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Parson’s School of Design. The couple had two children, Alexandre Egon and Tatiana Desirée. They separated in 1973 and divorced in 1983. She went on to become the Liza Minelli of the fashion world, marrying bisexual (?) Barry Diller.
The same year, he married Lynn Marshall, an American from Mississippi who was the co-owner of a flower shop; the couple remained childless. Between his marriages, Egon also had a male partner; he was frank about his bisexuality and the openness of his first marriage.
Fürstenberg wrote two books on fashion and interior design (The Power Look, 1978, and The Power Look at Home: Decorating for Men, 1980), as well as opening an interior design firm.
He began independent work as a fashion designer in 1977, designing clothes for plus-size women, and later expanding to full fashion and product licensing, with ready-to-wear, fragrance, and made to measure lines based in Rome. Next von Furstenberg designed ready-made clothing for the masses, and a ready-to-wear line of fashion.
Fürstenberg wrote two top selling books: The Power Look (1978), a guide to fashion and good taste, and The Power Look at Home: Decorating for Men (1980), a book on home furnishings. He opened an interior design firm in 1981. In 1991, he exhibited at Alta Moda days in Rome.
His high level of sexual activity resulted in Fürstenberg being nicknamed “Egon von First in bed.”
Egon von Fürstenberg died at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome in June 2004. The New York Post reported Fürstenberg’s widow stating that he died of liver cancer caused by a hepatitis C infection that he acquired in the 1970s. However, it was acknowledged in the 2024 documentary Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge that Egon von Fürstenberg had in fact been diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s
He died in Rome on 11 June 2004.