- Egon von Fürstenberg
Egon von Fürstenberg or Prince Egon of Fürstenberg (
June 29 ,1946 –June 11 ,2004 ) was afashion design er.Family
The Fürstenberg family is descended from both
Stéphanie de Beauharnais (adoptive daughter and first cousin of the stepchildren and also adoptive children of EmperorNapoleon I ) and the 18th-century English collector, writer, and eccentricWilliam 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 ofFiat 'sGianni 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.Life
Egon von Fürstenberg was born at
Lausanne inSwitzerland . Raised in great privilege inVenice, Italy , he was baptized by the futurePope John XXIII .Fürstenberg began his career as a buyer for
Macy's , and took night classes at theFashion 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 theBelgium -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 iconicwrap 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 theNew York Post , Fürstenberg's widow stated that he died of liver cancer caused by ahepatitis C infection picked up in the 1970s; other sources suggest thatAIDS was the underlying cause.External links
* [http://www.egonvonfurstenberg.com/ Homepage Egon von Fürstenberg]
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