HotelChatter || Diane von Furstenberg's New Collection is Hotel-Inspired

Going old school with a runway show in Florence last week for her Resort 2009 Collection, the foundress of the wrap dress Diane von Furstenberg flashed the retro card with outfits based on her own hotel travels.

Entitled "La Petite Valise," the collection's focus on dressing for the destination comes through with primary Riviera stripes and zigzags, bathing beauty swimsuits that scream "lounging on the lido," and a dress with the pattern of DvF's own passport pages.

Even though the entire show referenced the days of the grand tour, Furstenberg deemed a portion of it "the Hotel Life," flashing outfits of Wedgwood blue and a hotel key pattern directly influenced by the style of The Claridge's Hotel in London.

With her professed love of homes-away-from-home, we figured DvF should have had a hotel partnership somewhere in the past.

After a little digging we found a snippet about her 2005 collaboration with W Hotels to provide emergency fashion kits of a black wrap dress and DvF cosmetics to chic (and probably naughty, since a thong was included) girls on the go. She also put her dresses on the waitresses at the Hollywood Roosevelt.

Now we must admit both our desire for the entire collection and our general jealousy. Furstenberg's own life itinerary reads like the history of a strong-willed romance novel heroine: born in Belgium, educated in Switzerland, married a German prince, started a publishing house in Paris, launched her fashion brand in New York, and continues to punctuate her time with inspirational jaunts around the world.

She says of her jetsetting ways: "I rarely sleep more than five nights in the same bed...I can go to five cities and not buy anything, but I take hundreds of pictures." Well, we've been doing it backwards. Looks like we'll be settling for buying one of the dresses and pretending our fire escape is the bow of a yacht. Sigh.

[Photo: style.com and Ewan-M]

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