I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life - and I became that woman.
Diane von Furstenberg
Attitude is everything.
I travel light. I think the most important thing is to be in a good mood and enjoy life, wherever you are.
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.
There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!
The most important relationship you have in life is the one you have with yourself. And then after that, I'd say once you have that, it may be hard work, but you can actually design your life.
Confidence. If you have it, you can make anything look good.
Simplicity and sexiness, that's what people want. At a price that's not outrageous.
The wrap dress is the most traditional form of dressing: It's like a robe, it's like a kimono, it's like a toga. It doesn't have buttons or zippers. What made it different was that it was jersey; therefore, it was close to the body and it was a print.
Clarity is the most important thing. I can compare clarity to pruning in gardening. You know, you need to be clear. If you are not clear, nothing is going to happen. You have to be clear. Then you have to be confident about your vision. And after that, you just have to put a lot of work in.
Beauty is perfect in its imperfections, so you just have to go with the imperfections.
I never knew what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.
My best friend is me, and I take good care of me.
When you come to a hotel room, you want it to be grand, functional and beautiful. But you don't want things that are not useful. Sometimes you go to hotels and there are all these frames and pictures of people you don't know, and you end up hiding everything in the drawer, and then housekeeping come and put it out again.
The older I get, the more impressed I am with women. I have yet to meet a woman who is not strong. They don't exist.
Insecurity is a waste of time.
I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman.
Harbour Island in the Bahamas is beautiful, with turquoise water and pink sand.
All I can tell you is that I've never met a woman who is not strong, but sometimes they don't let it out. Then there's a tragedy, and then all of a sudden that strength comes. My message is let the strength come out before the tragedy.
Fashion is mysterious, as a rule. Why are blue jeans a classic? You just hit on something that happens to be timeless and right.
I don't like to talk about my dreams. I like to make them happen. I prefer to talk about them when they're done.
What's important to me is to share, and being inspired, and inspiring.
Go to a place where you're not going to be stressed, because a honeymoon itself can be a stressful thing.
Fashion can be this mysterious thing that you can't explain.
All women are the same, really: They are strong, but they are afraid of their own strength.
I believe that all women should have children. I think women are made to have children and to be mothers. I also think women have to have an identity outside the home.
My mother said that we're so lucky to be women. It's not that men are weak. Men are men. We're two completely different animals.
A challenging economy is always good for design. It unites necessity and functionality. You are forced to be creative with poor materials.
Everyone knows I married a prince, and then I married a billionaire.
I get ideas about what's essential when packing my suitcase.
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.
I adore dark chocolate.
I had arranged a birthday party for him and my children, who are all Aquarians. Instead, we got married. I ran out of excuses. It was just us and my children.
When I was young, I lived like an old woman, and when I got old, I had to live like a young person.
My mother never, ever told me about evilness. She only saw the beautiful things... she wanted to protect me from it.
When I was a little girl, if I didn't eat my soup, my mother would say, 'You have to think of all the Chinese children who have nothing to eat.' But now, for my children, Chinese people make everything, and for my grandchildren, they buy everything.
I had good legs, and I loved showing them off.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become.
I've been working seriously in giving fashion a place that it deserves.
I was 26 when I invented the wrap dress. It was just a nothing little printed dress made out an jersey, and before I know it, I lived an American Dream making more than 25,000 dresses a week.
Just don't go to a place where everything is too expensive... it'll put your husband in a bad mood.
I am not allowed to be afraid. My mother made me like that. As a child, if I was afraid of the dark, she would lock me in the closet. Things like this. And she would talk about the time she spent in the concentration camp, but not about being afraid, only about the good side of it.
The important thing is to take your time and not get stressed.
My biggest vice is playing solitaire on my iPad. It's bad. I mean, it's ridiculous.
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 real story is that I am very free, that I've managed to be who I wanted to be without compromising.
I wanted to be an empowered woman, and I became an empowered woman. And now I want to empower every woman. And I do it through my clothes, I do it through my words, I do it through my money, I do it through everything.
Animals come from nature. They were not designed. All my inspiration comes from nature, whether it's an animal or the layout of bark or of a leaf. Sometimes my patterns are very bold, and you can barely see where they come from, but all the textures and all the prints come out of nature.
Eighteen months before I was born, my mother was in Auschwitz. She weighed 49 pounds. She always told me that God saved her so she could give me life. I was born out of nothing.
Marriage was never a destination with me.
