Diane Von Furstenberg

When packaging is turned into a scrapbook of a family’s legacy.

To celebrate the 50 year anniversary and reissue of its iconic 1973 wrap dress and cover on Vogue Magazine, Diane Von Furstenberg wanted personal, keepsake-style packaging for a select group of family and friends. Zenpack’s award-winning portfolio was the perfect starting point to craft one-of-a-kind, plastic-free packaging.

The Problem

Talita Von Furstenberg, Diane Von Furstenberg’s granddaughter, wanted to gift a limited release reissue of the dress to family members and people close to the project over the years. She wanted to showcase the dress in a visually stunning way, displaying the brand’s unique style and elegant history. A small-production packaging run such as an influencer kit—or in this case, internal marketing—would be the perfect way to feature the dress. But if this isn’t mainly for Instagram, and instead just people close to you, how do you tell 50 years of history in a box, and how can the people crafting it make it personal if they don’t know you?

The Outcome

DVF came to Zenpack with vintage Vogue Magazines and photos of 50 years of runway memories. As the design team sifted through all these images and clippings, an idea was posed to float all these little pieces of memories in the air, one by one, so the recipient would feel the emotions of the gift. In short, create a scrapbook for the family. From that came a pop-up book style, all-paper, luxury package that captures the famous moments of the brand’s journey with Vogue Magazine. And with enough space to store unique gifts for everyone.

Challenges

There were a few main challenges in creating the packaging, from conception to fabrication. The first was simple: How do you capture 50 years of family history in a box? The way to solve it was simply by talking with the family and the people involved, understanding their history—the family, the brand—and what the 50 year event meant to them.

The other challenges were more physical in nature. The box itself is about the size of a 15-inch laptop, and deep, too—big enough to hold a dress folded in half, and multiple other items. The Zenpack team had never created any pop-up feature that was so intricate and large at the same time. A pop-up structure with multiple layers requires more space underneath so the lid can close flat, and the pop-ups themselves needed to be layered so it would feel like they were floating in air, rather than just hanging from a string. Size, mechanics, and physics were all getting their say in the structure.

Solution

After some experimentation with finding the balance between the size of the box and the mechanics of multiple pop-up features, we used a staircase structure for the pop-ups to create the feeling of layers and the passage of time, with each memory floating in its own space. The dress and other keepsakes are hidden below a panel which gives the pop-ups enough space to lay flat so the lid can close. Reminiscent of the countless fashion shows over the years, the theatrical reveal of the pop-ups also give it a runway feel.

The pictures—the heart of the scrapbook—were chosen by family members, and the brand’s mini icons were also represented, such as the lips and green dots. For fans of the brand and people closely associated with it, the box would be instantly recognizable as one celebrating the DVF’s history. The exterior is a collage of clippings from Vogue articles featuring the iconic wrap dress.

The packaging was made entirely from paper: rigid boards wrapped in coated paper for the box, and the pop-up structure made from paper too. The packaging was printed with four-color print plus the brand’s Pantone. And the all-paper, book style box lays flat for easy storage and assembly. And shipping is efficient due to its light weight.

Result

The end result was 25 packaging sets to hold a dress folded in half, plus cards, a customized booklet about DVF’s history designed for the reissue campaign, and other keepsakes unique to each recipient. Sets were given to Diane Von Furstenberg herself, plus family members, friends, partners, and magazine editors. The packaging and dress are on display together at DVF’s archival gallery in New York. Influencer marketing kits are one thing, but family scrapbooks were entirely new territory for Zenpack. And it was a lot of fun creating it.