Egon von Fürstenberg
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Egon von Fürstenberg or Prince Egon of Fürstenberg (June 29, 1946 – June 11, 2004) was a fashion designer.
[edit] Family
The Fürstenberg family is descended from both Stéphanie de Beauharnais (adoptive daughter and first cousin of the stepchildren and also adoptive children of Emperor Napoleon I) and the 18th-century English collector, writer, and eccentric William Thomas Beckford.
Eduard Egon Peter Paul Giovanni Prinz zu Fürstenberg was the elder son of Prince Tassilo of Fürstenberg (1903-1989) and his first wife, Clara Agnelli (born 1920), a sister of Fiat's Gianni Agnelli. He had a sister, Ira, and a younger brother, Sebastian. His stepmother was the Texas oil heiress Dr. Cecil Amelia Hudson, née Blaffer; by her, he had two stepbrothers.
[edit] Life
Egon von Fürstenberg was born at Lausanne in Switzerland. Raised in great privilege in Venice, Italy, he was baptized by the future Pope John XXIII.
Fürstenberg began his career as a buyer for Macy's, and took night classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He began designing clothes for plus-size women, and later expanding to full fashion and ready-to-wear lines.
On July 16, 1969 at Montfort l'Amaury, Yvelines, France, he married the Belgium-born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin, daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She was Jewish, and the senior Fürstenbergs objected to the couple's union on that basis. They had two children, Alexandre Egon (b. January 25, 1970) and Tatiana Desirée (b. February 16, 1971), and were soon divorced. His wife launched her own fashion house at Egon's urging, where she created the iconic wrap dress.
Diane later married media mogul Barry Diller in 2001. In 1983 Egon married a Mississippi native, Lynn Marshall (ca. 1950-).
Egon von Fürstenberg died at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome. According to the New York Post, Fürstenberg's widow stated that he died of liver cancer caused by a hepatitis C infection picked up in the 1970s; other sources suggest that AIDS was the underlying cause.
