Diane von Furstenberg Launches Podcast with Spotify (Exclusive)

Diane von Furstenberg is expanding her empire into the podcasting space. The fashion designer and feminist will launch her first podcast, InCharge with DVF, on Spotify starting March 12, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.

Her guests include Kris Jenner, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Project Runway judge Elaine Welteroth, Project Runway host Karlie Kloss and SiriusXM Satellite Radio founder Martine Rothblatt. They each have an intimate conversation with von Furstenberg about their successes and vulnerabilities in celebration of International Women’s Day, with a new episode dropping weekly.

The title InCharge relates to von Furstenberg’s movement and manifesto that encourages women to own who they are through four pillars: connect, expand, inspire and advocate. She tells THR that the podcast came from the desire to inspire young women through storytelling.

“It started when people always asked me, ‘What did you want to do when you were growing up?’ And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be. I wanted to be a woman in charge.’ I was lucky. [It] means to be independent, to have a man’s life in a woman’s body,” she says. “I am a feminist, so in charge is very synonymous to me, to my work, to everything I believe in.”

Von Furstenberg adds, “Truly to be in charge is first and foremost a commitment to yourself. It’s owning who you are. You own your imperfections. They become your assets. You own your vulnerability. It becomes your strength. It’s also about the relationship you have with yourself.” She stresses that after women’s movements #MeToo and Time’s Up were created, “I don’t want people to think that being in charge is aggressive. It’s not to go against somebody or ‘I am in charge and you are not.’”

The podcast is the result of several friendships for von Furstenberg, including with Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek and her guests, such as Jenner. “It’s very funny, I met her in the bathroom at the Met Gala. And we became friends. We started to talk and she is impressive. She really is. I know a lot of her daughters. I know Kendall, who worked for me and they love their mother. All I can tell you, at the end of that interview, I thought, ‘Maybe I’m not a good mother.’ She made me think because I’m not a soccer mom, I’m not all of that.”

As for Chopra Jonas, the podcast host says, “I’ve known her for a long time, but what impresses me about her, of course she’s beautiful, she’s this, she’s that, she’s all of that, but she’s actually extremely intelligent. All of these women, that are in charge. They don’t take no for an answer.” 

Von Furstenberg explains that the podcast will be “intimate conversations about the journey of life and survival” because “what is inspiring is for them to talk about their challenges, that they sometimes do feel like losers and what do they do about it?” (Other stars with podcasts have included Lena Dunham, Russell Brand, Dax Shepard, Ashley Graham, Chelsea Peretti, Gwyneth Paltrow and others.)

The Belgian-born designer founded her fashion label in 1972, now headquartered in New York City. In 2010, she founded the DVF Awards, which this year saw Hillary Clinton honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Von Furstenberg’s book The Woman I Wanted to Be was released in 2014.

“I’ve had a very full life. I do more in a week than people do in a year,” von Furstenberg says. “Now that I’m an older woman, I want to share my experience. I want to share my knowledge. I want to share my voice in order to have young women to be the women they want to be and to be in charge. I would like my legacy to be the woman who became in charge and helped other women to be in charge. That’s it.”