Prince Egon von Fürstenberg was a socialite, banker, fashion and interior designer, and member of the German aristocratic family Fürstenberg. In 1969, he married fashion designerDiane von Fürstenberg, with whom he had two children Prince Alexandre Egon and Princess Tatiana Desirée.. The same year, he married Lynn Marshall, an American and a Mississippi native who was 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 as well as opened an interior design firm. He died in Rome on 11 June 2004 of liver cancer deriving from an earlier hepatitis C infection. He was survived by his children and both wives.
Egon von Fürstenberg was born at Lausanne, Switzerland, was baptized by Pope John XXIII, and was thereafter brought up in great privilege in Venice, Italy. He earned a degree in economics at the University of Geneva, followed by an 18-month term in the Peace Corps in Burundi working as a teacher, and then two years as an investment banker in New York. While studying at university, he met fellow student Diane Simone Michelle Halfin, a Belgian-born, Jewish woman of Romanian-Greek descent and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. They married on 16 July 1969, at Montfort-l'Amaury, Yvelines, France. The new Princess Diane von Fürstenberg was pregnant, and Egon's father, who also objected to his marrying a Jew, boycotted the ceremony. 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 von Fürstenbergs had two children: Alexandre Egon and Tatiana Desirée. They divorced in 1983. Fürstenberg 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 an off-the-peg line of fashion. Fürstenberg wrote two top selling books: The Power Look, a guide to fashion and good taste, and The Power Look at Home: Decorating for Men, a book on home furnishings. He opened an interior design firm in 1981. In 1991, he exhibited at Alta Moda days in Rome. Fürstenberg collected art, and his collection included works by Zachary Selig. Egon von Fürstenberg died at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome on 11 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.
