Details: You have a lot of celebrity friends, and I know it must be very difficult to live a normal life.
DV: There was a time in my life, for almost a year, I had bodyguards every minute. I’m not in hiding now, but I was. For almost a year.

Details: When you travel, do you find yourself thinking about the type of man you would like in your life?
DV: Absolutely, I look at everybody. I think I’ll go to Hawaii this year—Maui. I like the beach on Maui. I’ve been to the south of France—the people are terrible. I want a change. If you do business at St Tropez, you never relax there, you go out. Maui is going to be much quieter.

Details: We’ve become entirely too celebrity-obsessed, with our crazy obsessions with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and their baby. Why do you think we care so much? Is it because our lives are dull?
DV: I think people don’t want to look so much inside of their lives.

Details: Do you still read reviews?
DV: Of course I do. I do, and I get upset. But this is my job. I read the reports of the shops, what we sell, what we don’t sell. After I read the reviews, I read everything else.

Details: Aside from just working with fashion, you have to be aware of what’s going on with music.
DV: Creative people send out information, what’s going to be next, but at the same time we try to receive any kind of information we can because its so important to know what’s going on in the world. Music and acting, theater, politics, everything.

Details: As long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been the first person to talk about a new celebrity, a new band, a new vacation spot—you’ve always had this amazing radar for what’s cool and interesting.
DV: I love to find new things. Right now, because of my son being in a rock band, I listen to punk metal. There’s not much happening in the rest of music. I really like hip-hop, but nothing’s really new out there. Hip-hop’s gotten huge. It’s all you hear, and anything on MTV is all alike.


Details: What do you think about rap stars and pop stars launching clothing labels, deciding they can be designers?
DV: I don’t think they want to be in design, I think it is a marketing thing. They’re making a name to get on a label. That’s all it is.

Details: Did that Saturday Night Live satire upset you at first?
DV: Why should it upset me?

Details: It shouldn’t. It’s flattering and funny, and it contributes to your being an icon. To achieve what you’ve achieved, and to sustain it, takes a lot of endurance. Do you work out?
DV: I do work out. And I still am smoking.