'Viagra Is The Worst Thing That Has Happened To Older Women'

The designer of the iconic wrap dress, Diane von Furstenberg, on power, money and getting what you want

- Anna Murphy

Diane von Furstenberg is remembering how her mother, an Auschwitz survivor, would shut her in a cupboard as a little girl. “She would say, ‘Fear is not an option.’ She would lock me in there so I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.” About ten minutes,” she continues breezily. “ And the truth is, I am glad she did it. First of all, it doesn’t stay dark. Second of all, what are you afraid of? It is just dark. It was the best gift she gave me.” It is hard to imagine the 71-year-old Belgian-born American dream incarnate von Furstenberg ever being afraid of anything or anyone. Her autobiography is called The Woman I Wanted to Be.

When did she become her, I ask. “In my twenties.” Of course. “I knew I wanted to be a woman in charge.” She is stretched out before me on the sofa of her suite in Claridge’s in London like a big cat, wide-eyed and languid, occasionally pawing one-handed at two halves of a pomegranate. She is, notes Nathan Jenden—her label’s new chief design officer—“very feline”. She certainly is. A kind of leopard lady. Her movements are so smoothly feral that one suspects she has ball bearings rather than joints.