SELLING Confidence
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.” For how long? “About 10 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 ever being afraid of anything or anyone. Her 2014 autobiography is called The Woman I Wanted to Be. When did she become her, I ask. “In my 20s.” Of course. “I knew I wanted to be a woman in charge.”
She’s 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 a pomegranate. She is, notes Nathan Jenden — her label’s new chief design officer, who’s sitting neatly nearby — “very feline”. She certainly is. A kind
