Diane von Furstenberg

Do I believe in reincarnation? Well, let's say that I believe in karma. I think you make your own karma.

My mother never, ever told me about evilness. She only saw the beautiful things... she wanted to protect me from it.

I was born in Belgium. I went to school in England and in Switzerland, then I came to America, so I really feel like I am a citizen of the world.

I was lucky enough to have it all. To be successful in business, to have children, to raise them on my own, and to travel and live my life. It was a lot of work, but it's a privilege to have been able to do it.

When you get into a hotel room, you lock the door, and you know there is a secrecy, there is a luxury, there is fantasy. There is comfort. There is reassurance.

Work and children I could have. But the husband was just too much.

I can honestly say that I understand women very well. If you understand yourself, you understand women, because, in the end, all women are the same.

I'm not someone who calculates things.

I loved the seventies.

I used the aspects of being a woman to my advantage, but I worked for myself, not a big corporation, so I was lucky to have the freedom to behave however I liked.

What's important to me is to share, and being inspired, and inspiring.

The most important thing is to be healthy, to drink a lot of water, to fight gravity as much as possible. I am one of the few people who decided I wasn't going to do any invasion with my face.

The Chinese consumer is everybody. It's very simple.

Simplicity and sexiness, that's what people want. At a price that's not outrageous.

My best friend is me, and I take good care of me.

I'm not the only one; most people's mothers are the most influential person in their life. But my mother survived the camps, and she was very strong. She made me strong, but she wanted me to be strong. That's more important.

The fashion industry has a responsibility to represent a healthy image of women, but to start weighing them and putting them against a wall and making them feel like animals? No.

I communicate mostly via e-mail and receive hundreds of e-mails a day.

What I think I sell with my clothes is confidence, so hopefully all my dresses, my accessories, are friends to the women. When you open the closet, and your eyes are swollen, and you don't like the way you look, you go to your friends.

The real story is that I am very free, that I've managed to be who I wanted to be without compromising.