Allow some of fashion’s biggest names to inform us on affairs of the heart …
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Love is often cited as one of the biggest creative inspirations of all, alongside maybe sex, followed closely by death. In addition to ruminations about style and why clothes matter, some of the greatest fashion designers have been outspoken about affairs of the heart. Namely, what constitutes a good relationship, how love ultimately defines us all and in a more risqué vein, according to Gabrielle Chanel, the best way to treat a man: like a child. Follow at your own risk!
F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said, “I love her and it was the beginning of everything.” However, not all tales of great love involve a happily ever after, as New York based fashion designer Diane Von Fürstenberg demonstrates. Although she has been happily married to media mogul Barry Diller since 2001, Von Fürsterberg actually counts the break up of her first marriage as the beginning of her something great – an exhilarating career. “Usually, the fairy tale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over,” she said of her divorce from her first husband Prince Egon Von Fürstenberg.
Image credit: Gabrielle Chanel, 31 Rue Cambon, Paris, 1937. Photo: Roger Schall/Conde Nast/Shutterstock.
Gabrielle Chanel’s irreverent quips on all things in life, including love, are widely documented, even more so since a UK retrospective on her life at the Victoria & Albert museum opened late last year (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 and it’s also believed she had a near two-decade long affair with the Duke of Westminster Hugh Grosvenor. However, perhaps her most poignant contribution to the topic of love is the following: “As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!”
By contrast, Karl Lagerfeld, one of Gabrielle Chanel’s 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, who took home the gong for Outstanding Achievement at The Fashion Awards in 2018, is known for offering up words of wisdom when it comes to all things sartorial. However, she is 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, that is upsetting, I don’t feel it so much. 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 level headed about affairs of the heart. Westwood had three great loves of her life: her first husband, Derek Westwood, a Hoover factory apprentice, Malcolm McLaren, with whom she opened the boutique Let It Rock on London’s King’s Road (in 1974 it was renamed Sex) and Andreas Kronthaler, a fashion student that Westwood married in 1992, they were together 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 just thought, you know, stupid people, with that rubbish. But now I see that that is so important,” she said.
