The wrap dress

Diane von Furstenberg made clothes that women wanted to wear and for her that was no fuss , figure flattering dresses in fashionable colours. This fashion designer filled a niche in the fashion world with stylish and affordable everyday clothing.

"...It was Diane von Furstenberg, of course, who made the wrap dress high fashion back in 1972.
She was continuing an easy, very American style of sporty dressing that had been pioneered by the legendary Claire McCardell back in the Thirties and Forties.
In 1938, McCardell came up with the simple "monastic" robe, which was tied at the waist with a sash.
In 1942, she designed the "popover" wrap house dress, that was unrestricting enough to polish the floors in, while flattering to the pointy-breasted shape of the day.
But while McCardell's wrap dresses were mass produced, Furstenberg came up with a highfashion style that used stretchy, clingy jersey, and injected colour and exotic prints into the mix.
The jet set - including models Jerry Hall and Pat Cleveland, and society beauties Berry and Marisa Berenson - quickly adopted the wrap dress, and the look soon filtered down to the ordinary working woman, who found it a no-nonsense way to dress for the office, encouraged no doubt by Furstenberg's snappy mantra: "Feel like a woman, wear a dress."
DvF sold millions of the wrap, but when her style of feminine but not too frilly dressing fell out of favour in the super-competitive workplace of the Eighties, when we all took to severe tailoring, she retreated to the fashion wilderness for almost two decades.
Only in 1997, when young, more confident women again started to want to wear girly, floral frocks, did DvF re-emerge with her signature wrap dress, appealing to a new generation who loved being able to pull on something feminine, that didn't need to be ironed or co-ordinated, and could be worn both at work and on holiday..."