DVF: Still A Woman’s Woman

"If you can't roll it up and squeeze it into your suitcase, it's not going in."

At 66-years-old and moving into her fourth term as President of the CFDA, Diane von Fustenberg shows no sign of slowing down and her fashion aesthetic remains the same as it did when she launched her label in 1970: feminine, sophisticated clothes that make style easy - and empowering - for women.

Her famous wrap dress was conceived as a way for women to get dressed and silently leave a sleeping man (ie, to give her a quiet getaway if she'd decided to exit the scene of a one-night stand, without so much as the sound of a zip that might wake him up), and her pre-spring/summer 2014 collection includes a new style of wrap with a full woven skirt below its knitted jersey upper that is the style's most flattering incarnation yet.

Diane von Furstenberg

"These clothes are your friends. They are all about body language - flattering, effortlessly sexy. They are for a life on the go but they have all the right structural tools to curve you in all the right directions," Diane said last week; in London to present the collection in her Bruton Street store - between staying in her self-designed suite in Claridge's and finding time to eat in the Wolseley and Scotts and determined to take her granddaughter to the Buckingham Palace exhibition while she's here.

Accessories are inspired by a chunky gold bracelet that the veteran designer wears every day and which features a meditational phrase on each link - learned from her time learning from Deepak Chopra 20 years ago - and they are perfectly in tune with the easy breezy sex appeal of the clothes.

But one thing Diane won't do is menswear. "I could do ties or shorts I guess," she says languidly. "But I can't see that I'd bring anything new to menswear. I'm a woman's woman really."