Diane von Furstenberg on life, love, and a wrap dress

Cruise the canals of Venice, amid the grand palazzos and Rialto Bridge, and it's understandable why this iconic city is now home to one of fashion's most iconic names: Diane von Furstenberg.She spends about five months of the year in Venice: "It's my stage," she said."It's where I think." Now 79, von Furstenberg, or DVF, burst onto the scene in the 1970s.

What made her famous? A single item of clothing inspired by the tops ballerinas wear, a little dress that was comfortable, practical and affordable.Asked if she ever tires of talking about the wrap dress, von Furstenberg replied, "Well, I used to.

Because I was doing all kinds of things, and people would say the wrap dress.I'd say, the wrap dress? Enough already.

I've done so many more."The idea for the wrap dress, which debuted in 1974, came to her while watching, of all things, news coverage of Watergate."Julie Eisenhower, the daughter of Nixon, is making a speech," von Furstenberg said.

"And oh my God, she's wearing my little wrap top with a skirt in a snake print.And that's when I thought, Oh, you know what? We should turn it into a dress."She would sell a million of them by 1976.

("It's insane," she said.)  And at age 29, she landed on the cover of Newsweek, which crowned her "the most marketable female in fashion since Coco Chanel." Diane Simone Michele Halfin was born in Brussels, Belgium, on New Year's Eve, 1946.Her father was a businessman; her mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, who weighed about 49 pounds when she was freed from the death camp.

"But she came back," von Furstenberg said."Her mother fed her like a little bird every five minutes.

And within six months she was normal.And 13 months later, I was born.

And she used to say, 'God saved me so I could give you life.By giving you life, you gave me mine back.'"Before DVF became fashion royalty, she became a princess, marrying Ëgon von Furstenberg, a German-Italian prince.

They had two ch...