Power dressing

The miracle baby of a Holocaust survivor, who married a prince then became a hugely successful and influential fashion designer, reflects on her 'folkloric' life

- Jess Cartner - Morley

Diane von Fürstenberg picks up on the first ring. We are speaking by phone, not on Zoom, so I start by asking her where she is at the moment. "Oh, it's very complicated," she says. A drawn-out, gravelly sigh crackles down the line. "I'm in a very contemplative place. I'm almost 77, and I have had a big life. A folkloric life. A great adventure. And now it is time to look at the balance sheet of that life."

I was actually wondering about her geographical whereabouts, not her philosophical ones, but the answer is pure Von Fürstenberg. She has always been one for the big picture, for the grand gesture, for feeling all the feels. Even the wrap dress that made her fame and her fortune - an icon that turns 50 next year - was only ever a means to an end, a way for Von Fürstenberg to get the life she wanted. As a little girl, she says, she didn't know what she wanted to do when she grew up, but she did know what kind of woman she wanted to be: a woman in charge. "I didn't know the specifics of what that meant, but I absolutely knew the feeling. And I became the woman I wanted to be, because of that dress. I created the dress, but really the dress created me?" 

Von Fürstenberg is very much in charge. She can't help but take the reins of any situation, or any conversation, which makes her almost uninterviewable, but fabulously entertaining to listen to. Eventually, I find out that she is talking to me from her apartment in Manhattan, a glittering glass penthouse with a vast leopard-print carpet and views over the High Line. I'm sad not to get her on camera, because she is glorious to look at: Joan Collins-esque panache with a Bohemian edge. "It is wonderful to get older," she says. "I don't understand why people don't like it. Anyway, I always liked to look a little bit destroyed, you know?"