Fern Mallis’ favourite conversations with fashion’s best

On how Michael Kors got started in fashion 

"I asked Michael Kors, how did you know you wanted to be a designer? He told me about being at summer camp and hating the way the clothing came back from the laundry. So he started his own laundry – a dry cleaning business – with his friend in the bunk. They would wash people’s stuff and lay it out flat under heavy wooden planks. Then get good tissue paper and wrap the clean clothes well. And remember, this is just a kid. Many of these famous designers started out as entrepreneurs. Whether it was a stand on the street selling juice, or making dolls, crocheting things in their basements, starting little shops. They all had that thing in them."  

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On coaxing renowned (and painfully private) photographer Bill Cunningham into talking about his life

"I had been begging him to come on for two years. He even sent me a letter once about why he wouldn’t do it – he said he never saw the documentary (Bill Cunningham New York) that was made on him because it ruined his life. People would stop and talk to him everywhere, it hindered his work, he just wanted to be left alone. I understood but I was upset I wasn’t going to get the interview. Then a month later, at the CFDA awards gala, I was talking to him and he turned around to get somebody’s name, and knocked my vodka and soda all over my chiffon kaftan. He was mortified! He kept shaking and apologising the whole time, saying I’ll do anything you want. I looked at him and said, would you do the interview? He looked at me and said, yes.

It turned out to be one of the more iconic ones. He told amazing stories. How he used to be a hat designer in his heyday, and emotional stories about his family and his upbringing. But my favourite was when he was working in the custom-made section of (department store) Bonwit Teller. I asked him, is it true that you dyed the suit that Jackie Kennedy wore to the President's funeral? The red Balenciaga suit? He said, 'I think it was Dior? She didn’t have time to get a black suit organised so she sent us her red suit and we dyed it black'. Now that's fashion history right there."

On the life lessons Diane von Furstenberg learnt from her mother's experiences during the Holocaust

"She said the greatest lesson she learnt was that sometimes what you think is the worst thing to happen to you is actually not. She spoke of how her mom, at 14 or 15, travelled from Belgium to the camps in Germany in an overcrowded cattle car. On the way she was befriended by an older woman in her 30s or 40s who tried to take care of her. But when they got to the camp, they were separated into two different lines by these big German men. Diane's mom got hysterical and she ran to go be with the woman in the other line, but she was scolded by one of the men and told to return to hers. And right after, the line the woman was in went straight to the gas chambers. What she had thought was the worst possible thing – being separated from that woman – was what saved her life."  

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On being this close to Tom Ford's big baby reveal

"He was extraordinary, he completely seduced everybody – as Tom Ford does. I’d asked him about getting married to Richard Buckley, his longtime companion and he said if the laws in the US changed to acknowledge same sex marriages, he would, in a heartbeat. He was waiting for the federal laws to change. I then asked, 'Would you both consider having a child?' and he said, 'Well, I’d have to do it quick because I’m almost 50 and I want to play with the baby'. A month later, the papers said Tom Ford and Richard Buckley just had a baby. I wrote congratulating them. Richard wrote back to say 'and to think the bun was already in the oven when you were interviewing him!'. I later said to Richard, 'Omg, he’s a really good actor.' And he said, 'Better than you think'."

Photographs: Joyce Culver

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In 2011, Fern Mallis, former executive director of CFDA and the creator of 7th on 6th (or New York Fashion Week, as we now know it) decided to “put her imprint on the fashion conversation” in New York, by interviewing its foremost stars for cultural NGO 92nd Street Y. The lineup for the series of 90-minute taped sessions called Fashion Icons With Fern Mallis was, unsurprisingly, stellar. And Rizzoli has now condensed 14 of the interviews into a arm-weight called Fashion Lives. Expect deets about March Jacobs' four-time bankruptcy, Michael Kors' summer camp laundry service, Bill Cunningham's tryst with Jackie O and the incredible life of Diane von Furstenberg. Plus, lots of never-before-seen photographs she cajoled them into sharing. Here, Mallis reveals the most sparkling bits of her conversations with some of fashion's greatest icons

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