Some of fashion’s biggest names on affairs of the heart …
L’amour is often cited as one of the biggest creative inspirations of all. Some of the world’s greatest fashion designers have been outspoken about love and how (in a more risqué vein) the best way to treat a man is like a child … according to Gabrielle Chanel, that is. Follow that advice at your own risk!
F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said, “I love her and it was the beginning of everything.” However, not all tales involve a happily ever after, as Diane Von Fürstenberg can attest to. Although she’s been happily married to media mogul Barry Diller since 2001, Von Fürstenberg actually counts the break-up of her first marriage as the beginning of an exhilarating career. “Usually, the fairytale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over,” she said of her divorce from Prince Egon Von Fürstenberg.
Image credit: Gabrielle Chanel, 31 Rue Cambon, Paris, 1937. Photo: Roger Schall/Conde Nast/Shutterstock.
Gabrielle Chanel’s irreverent quips are widely documented, even more so since a UK retrospective on her life at the Victoria & Albert museum opened in 2023 (read more about Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto here). Her relationship with British shipping merchant Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel ended tragically after his death in a car crash. It’s also believed that she had a near two-decade long affair with the Duke of Westminster Hugh Grosvenor. However, perhaps her most poignant contribution to the topic is: “As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!”
By contrast, Karl Lagerfeld, one of her successors at the house of Chanel spoke about familial love being the strongest kind. “The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children,” he once said.
Meanwhile, Miuccia Prada, godmother of high fashion is known for her words of wisdom when it comes to all things sartorial. She’s no stranger to the fact that love is one of the greatest levellers of all. “I think what counts in life are the same for all of us: fear, love, death, sickness, joy, childhood, friendship, probably hate. These are the things that have moved humanity forever, these are the things that really count,” she told AnOther Magazine.
In spite of being one of fashion’s most anarchic figures, the late great Dame Vivienne Westwood was quite conservative in relationships. Westwood had three great loves of her life: factory apprentice Derek Westwood, Malcolm McLaren – with whom she opened the boutique Let It Rock on London’s King’s Road, later renamed Sex – and fashion student Andreas Kronthaler, who she married in 1992 until she passed away in 2022. “A relationship should be based on friendship. I remember somebody telling me that when I was younger and I thought, stupid people, with that rubbish. But now I see that that is so important,” she said.
