Free The Woman I Wanted to Be by Diane von Furstenberg Page A

couldn’t touch it, I felt repulsed, but Egon downed it with grace as if we were at the most elegant home in Paris. I will always remember that day, the lesson it taught me. Egon had an incredible ease about him, which made all people feel good about themselves. He was a true prince.
    I’d traveled a lot with my family as a child, but Egon brought it to a different level. He infused in me the same curiosity and sense of adventure, which I carry to this day. I’m always ready to go. I pack lightly. I travel lightly, leaving time for the unknown. Even as a child I loved to travel, through my Tintin books. It was with Tintin that I learned geography and discovered the world first—America, Egypt, Peru, China, the Congo. When I arrive somewhere I have never been before, I always think of Tintin.
    B ut Egon’s most important gift was our children, all the more because I was hesitant about having them, especially Alexandre. He was the unexpected result of a weekend I spent with Egon in Rome in May 1969. I was living in Italy then, working as an intern for a fashion industrialist, Angelo Ferretti. Egon was taking the summer off, having completed his training program at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, and was on his way to India and the Far East with a friend from school, Marc Landeau, before starting another job at the investment bank Lazard Frères in New York. I was very excited to see him and he, evidently, me. He had organized a big dinner with friends at Tula, a fashionable restaurant off Via Condotti, and I went with him wearingan evening jumpsuit with a plunging décolleté we had bought on sale that afternoon on the Via Gregoriana.
    I remember there were paparazzi outside in the streets, but what happened inside was brighter than all of their flashbulbs. Egon gave me a beautiful ring he had designed, a pale sapphire in a big gold setting. To my complete surprise, this dinner was an engagement party. I was very excited, even though I did not totally believe it. Yet that night, in the intimacy of our bedroom, I remember whispering to Egon: “I will give you a son.” Did I really mean it? Or was I only trying to be seductive? In any event, after the weekend, Egon went to India and I went back to Ferretti’s factory.
    A few weekends later I went to Monaco with friends to watch the Grand Prix again. Ferretti was in Monaco, too, and offered me a ride back to Milan at the end of the weekend. He drove his Maserati very fast and I thought it was all the high-speed twists and turns in the road that were making me nauseated. I felt even more sick the next day and thought a sauna might make me feel better. It didn’t. Instead I fainted in the middle of Piazza San Babila and remember hearing people saying “She’s dead, she’s dead” and all I could do was move a finger to show them “No, I’m not dead.” What I was, of course, was pregnant. I couldn’t believe my ears when the doctor told me the news.
    Here I was, barely twenty-two, and what I wanted most was to be independent. Furthermore, Egon was one of the best “catches” in Europe. Who was going to believe that I had not done it on purpose? I went home to Geneva to see another doctor who told me he could help me end the pregnancy. I was torn.
    I went to my mother for advice. She had taken Egon’s gift of a ring more seriously than I had and was horrified at the thought that I could make such a decision on my own. “You are engaged,” she said. “The least you can do is discuss the matter with your fiancé.”Reluctantly, I drafted a telegram to Egon, who was in Hong Kong, offering him the choice. I have kept the telegram of his wonderful reply in my scrapbook. He was clear and definite. “Only one option. Organize marriage in Paris July 15. I rejoice. Thinking of you. Love and kisses, Eduard Egon.”
    S uddenly my life was giving me vertigo, though it was a happy dizziness. No time to waste. All the wedding preparations: invitations to be printed, wedding