# Graziano de Boni Is Betting DVF's Next Generation Looks a Lot Like Its First > Two years into the job, DVF's CEO has spent less time chasing reinvention than reconnecting the brand with the wrap dress, archive prints, and multi-generational following that made it famous in the first place. - Source: GLAARA - Canonical URL: https://glaara.com/article/graziano-de-boni-dvf-ceo-next-generation - Author: GLAARA Editorial - Section: Style - Published: 2026-09-11T08:12:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-11T08:12:00.000Z - Tags: DVF, Diane von Furstenberg, Fashion, Graziano de Boni, Brand Strategy --- When Graziano de Boni took over as CEO of Diane von Furstenberg in October 2023, he inherited a 53 year old company that had spent years operating at arm's length from its own identity, its business run largely through a Chinese distributor rather than in house. His answer over the following 16 months was not a dramatic overhaul so much as a return to fundamentals, treating the brand's own history as the raw material for its next chapter rather than something to be replaced. ## Reconnecting instead of reinventing De Boni has been direct about the philosophy behind the turnaround. We didn't need a reinvention, he has said, we needed to reconnect with what was already working. In practice that meant digging back into the archive and finding an asset hiding in plain sight, the wrap dress that has continued to sell for more than 50 years, along with a deep library of prints and fabrics that amounted to a design vocabulary the brand had stopped fully using. Rather than commission an entirely new aesthetic, his team has spent much of that time upgrading roughly 75 percent of the company's fabric library, leaning harder into natural materials like silk to bring the product back up to the standard the archive implied. ## Taking the business back in house The creative reset has run alongside an operational one. In 2025, DVF brought its operations back in house after years spent handing distribution over to an outside partner, a move aimed squarely at reclaiming control over how the brand is priced, presented, and sold. That has fed into a broader direct to consumer strategy built around a smaller number of exclusive retail partnerships rather than broad wholesale distribution, including a newly exclusive deal with Zalando to handle the brand's presence across Europe. ## Why the archive is the real growth engine What de Boni describes finding inside the company was less a struggling label than an underused one. He has pointed to the authentic, multi generational relationship women have built with DVF over decades as something particularly well suited to a digital first retail and social media landscape, where a brand with real archival depth and a recognizable origin story has an advantage over something built from scratch. The wrap dress in particular functions as a piece of shorthand that a new customer can discover and immediately understand, without the brand needing to explain what it stands for from zero. ## A creative handoff built for what comes next The next test of that strategy arrives on the runway. After a transitional collection under returning creative director Nathan Jenden, DVF has named Henry Zankov as its new artistic director, with his first collection set to debut during New York Fashion Week in September 2026. De Boni has framed the move as bringing new energy and cultural relevance capable of connecting a new generation to DVF, a phrase that captures the balancing act at the center of his whole tenure, evolving the brand's presentation without disturbing the archive and history that made it worth reviving in the first place. --- Originally published by GLAARA. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://glaara.com/article/graziano-de-boni-dvf-ceo-next-generation.