Diane von Furstenberg designed her famous jersey wrap-dress in 1972. The daughter of Jewish parents, Diane Halfin was born in Belgium on December 31, 1946. She married Prince Egon von Furstenberg when she was 23 years old but three years later, when the marriage broke down, she became a single, working mother of two.

Despite a demand for 15,000 dresses a week in 1975, Diane ran into financial trouble after putting her name to too many different licenses and overextending her cosmetics line. She decided to sell in 1983. After a 15-year hiatus from fashion, she relaunched her famous dress in 1997 and has since built a thriving fashion house based in New York.

I was young at the right time – somewhere between the Pill and Aids. We felt very liberated, but that didn’t stop me being terrified and intimidated when I took my dresses to show Diane Vreeland, the then Editor-in-Chief at American Vogue.

After the meeting I ended up on the street in such a state; I couldn’t get a taxi and I couldn’t lift the suitcase so I came home crying, it didn’t matter that she’d told me she loved the dresses.

I’m attracted to unconventional English attitudes to fashion. How the English women used to dress in the Thirties has always inspired me – they were so elegant, they travelled, they were adventurous.

We are always coming back to England to find young talent for the company. My creative director, Nathan Jenden, studied at Central Saint Martins. It is very hard when you hire a designer; I mean it’s to do with a feeling more than what you actually see. Soon I’ll be opening my second shop here, then hopefully I’ll show my main collection at London Fashion Week.

My wrap-dress sculpts the body. I love being a woman and that’s what I preach with my clothes. The wrap makes women feel confident, beautiful, powerful. Yes, I’ve had legal issues with others copying the design; that’s the price of success. When things go bad you have to renew yourself – show your leg, move your ass and have fun.

My role as a designer is a bit like being a cook: I’ll give you a great buffet with lots of choice and the vegetables will be crisp and colourful, but I won’t offer you fat or grease. The wrap-dress that we relaunched in 1997 was smaller. People are thinner these days. We changed tiny elements of the design; you know, that’s the mystery of fashion. But you have got to move on, you know that’s not the only thing I do. But there was something special about that dress.

I was born in Belgium – it was very dull. It rained a lot and everyone was blonde with straight hair. I had black curly hair, so I didn’t feel that I belonged there. I knew that I wanted to do something fun and different in my life but I didn’t know what. Then I started going away; my mother sent me to Switzerland and then to England, and that was when the adventure of my life began.

My mother was a concentration camp survivor: it has affected me enormously. I didn’t realise it, but she made me very independent and she never let me be afraid. If I was scared of the dark, she would sit me in a dark room, she made me very strong. Even though she lived through this horror, she never told me not to trust people.

Marlene Dietrich had more style than anyone: to be honest, she just had more style than she had anything else. There was a lot of thought behind how she put herself together and how she moved. There was something about her that was strong; she really enjoyed being a woman.

My style is all about the woman I wanted to become. She is very glamorous but she is active: she has kids, she has lovers, she travels and she has her own business – she can do it all and is ready for anything. Clothes are about enhancing the body – they affect how you walk, how you act, how you sit. It is about empowering the woman.

Yes, I was one half of a glamorous power-couple, but you don’t realise it at the time. We went out a lot; I danced with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol at Studio 54. Warhol took pictures of me in my kitchen, but I didn’t realise that he’d actually paint me.

When he died, I bought all of my pictures; I keep them mainly in the studio. You know, it was great fun back then – it was a new country and a new life, everything was new and everything was fresh. I was a European living the American dream: I’d wish it on everybody. But we had our problems; the marriage fell apart for one thing.

My children have always had strong opinions about my work and life: talking about ex-boyfriends, they used to say, Mummy, he has no personality; they used to think that I’d change according to my boyfriend. I did go from a jungle man to an intellectual.

I’m president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. I’m that age now, and at that point in my career, when it’s about giving back. We help young designers, give them benefits and teach them. My business is a building that I have built over many years; I am in a position to help them.

Yes, size zero is a problem, but it has nothing to do with the fashion industry.

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