Tonight's guest are Samantha Power on The Daily Show and Diane von Furstenberg on The Colbert Report.
Samantha Power is an "academic, author and diplomat who currently serves as the United States Ambassador to the United Nation." She has spoken out against the mandatory Ebola quarantines in October and more recently talked about the UN peacekeepers.
“Now,’’ she said, “we have U.N. peacekeeping opening its gates” to more than 100,000 people displaced by the civil war in South Sudan, where people living “foot-deep in filthy water” told her in August that they were just glad to have drinking water and physical safety.
In the old days, peacekeepers went only where they were invited, by mutual consent of all parties, to monitor cease-fire agreements. Now, they’ve been asked to disarm rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, escort shipments of food and medicine in South Sudan and protect civilians amid 10 ongoing conflicts. There are a record 16 missions around the world, involving 130,000 peacekeepers, up from 75,000 a decade ago.Samantha Power on why we fund U.N. peacekeepers, even with no peace to keep
There is no shortage of international problems to discuss so I expect it will be a good interview.
Diane von Fürstenberg is a fashion designer best know for her
wrap dress. She is on tonight to discuss her book
The Woman I Wanted to Be
One of the most influential, admired, and innovative women of our time: fashion designer, philanthropist, wife, mother, and grandmother, Diane von Furstenberg offers a book about becoming the woman she wanted to be.
Diane von Furstenberg started out with a suitcase full of jersey dresses and an idea of who she wanted to be—in her words, “the kind of woman who is independent and who doesn’t rely on a man to pay her bills.” She has since become that woman, establishing herself as a global brand and a major force in the fashion industry, all the while raising a family and maintaining “my children are my greatest creation.”
In The Woman I Wanted to Be, von Furstenberg reflects on her extraordinary life—from childhood in Brussels to her days as a young, jet-set princess, to creating the dress that came to symbolize independence and power for an entire generation of women. With remarkable honesty and wisdom, von Furstenberg mines the rich territory of what it means to be a woman. She opens up about her family and career, overcoming cancer, building a global brand, and devoting herself to empowering other women, writing, “I want every woman to know that she can be the woman she wants to be.”
Diane von Furstenberg was a young socialite when she first started showing her designs to New York boutiques and magazine editors in the late 1960s. The dresses she created weren't very expensive and they definitely weren't couture. They were wrap dresses — made of gentle jersey, gorgeously patterned, with a deep-cut V-neck and light belt.
"It's a dress that was practical and pretty and sexy," von Furstenberg tells NPR's Audie Cornish. It's been described, she says, as "a dress that you get the men with ... but he doesn't mind taking you to his mother."
It sold by the millions.
In her new memoir, The Woman I Wanted to Be, von Furstenberg tells her unlikely story of success. Her mother was a Belgian Holocaust survivor — a history von Furstenberg was always aware of, though her mother didn't speak of it often.
"She had tattooed numbers on her arm, but she had it removed because people kept on looking at it," von Furstenberg remembers. "And when she did talk about it, she protected me. ... She didn't want to burden me with the heaviness of it all."
On her initial discomfort with being called a "designer"
It's not reluctance. It's humility. You know, I worked in this mill for this Italian man who taught me everything and then I made a few samples and then I brought them to America. You know, I made easy little dresses. That's what I did. I didn't think I was actually designing them and I didn't think I was making a fashion statement. Yet, this year, I celebrate the 40th anniversary of my famous wrap dress. And I sold millions of them and generations and generations of women have worn it. So, all of a sudden, it just hit me. I said, maybe I did not want to make a fashion statement, yet I did. And it was actually more than just a fashion statement; it turned out that it was sociological. So I guess, then, now I am accepting it.
On why the wrap dress took off in the '70s
It's a dress that's both proper and seductive — practical and sexy. It just has everything. You know, you can go in a boardroom and make a presentation and feel feminine, and yet not exposed. ... [With no snaps or zippers] you could take it out and slip in and out of it making no noise.
On whether the intent was to create a dress that could be taken off easily
None of it was the intent, but it was the reality.
40 Years Later, Diane Von Furstenberg's Wrap Dress Still Wears Well
Fashion design is not something that really interests me, but it is a Colbert interview so it should be entertaining at least.
This Week's Guests
THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
We 11/12: Steve Carell
Th 11/13: Maziar Bahari, Gael Garcia Bernal
THE COLBERT REPORT
We 11/12: Terence Tao
Th 11/13: Jennifer Lawrence
Google has a nice doodle for
Veterans Day.