It is completely impossible to interview Diane von Furstenberg. It is almost as impossible to meet her without falling just a little bit in love with her. The first, because it is not in her nature to follow another person’s lead, whether in conversation or in anything else, so instead of answering your questions she just tells whatever tale from her fabulous life she feels like telling; the second, for much the same reason.
We are sitting together on a yellow velvet sofa in the penthouse suite of a smart Munich hotel, balcony doors open to a breeze drifting in over the red gothic rooftops. She puts her glasses on to get a better look at me, then leans back and props her feet – nude fishnets, high-heeled sandals – on the coffee table, and tells me about the time she told Oprah Winfrey that as a little girl she “didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be – an independent woman, who drives her own cars and pays her own bills” – and how Oprah loved the story so much that Von Furstenberg has named her forthcoming memoirs The Woman I Wanted To Be, “because if Oprah thinks it’s important, it’s important, right?” Read more.
