Diane Von Furstenberg probably thought things couldn’t get any more precarious. First there was last month’s fashion-show fiasco, when a lighting section collapsed, injuring several people and sending Cosmopolitan fashion editor Karen Hanes Larrain to the hospital. Then, on October 13, DVF’s employees were sent home amid fears that one of their office’s walls would collapse. An insider says employees had been dealing with alarming sounds and vibrations for a few days until it felt like the construction workers were going to break through the wall. Von Furstenberg is in China, so “DVF’s CFO called the city planner,” says the insider. “[The official] suspected it wasn’t safe for people to be in the same building where so much construction was going on, and I think they’re being extra prudent now because of what happened at the fashion show.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Amy Zalneraitis
• Table of Contents: Oct 24, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!