ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: NYFW | Diane von Furstenberg Spring/Summer 2013

“It really is so much about me when I was a young princess,” announced Diane von Furstenberg after her insouciantly glamorous show, “a rebel princess. When, yes, you go to the Roman palaces, you go to Jaipur, you go to Marrakech, and you look the sophisticated aristocrat, but you take off the tunic and the layers and you are ready to go dancing all night.”

Thousands of smiling mirror lips hung from the rafters or were buried into the creamy carpet underfoot, reflecting the feel-good vibe of the show, which played out to a front-row lineup that included a generous helping of billionaires amongst the glamazons.

Those exotic destinations of the late sixties and early seventies were reflected in the billowing palazzo pants and the geometrically detailed Cardin-esque tunics (in the hypnotic colors of Slim Aarons’s café-society portraits), fashioned for flitting between the ballrooms of Italy’s stateliest mansions, and in the airy djellaba coats and sarouel pants for tuning out in a Moroccan riad, and in the sari draperies, spangled embroideries, and silver baubles garlanding neck and hemlines for a Rajasthan pilgrimage.

Diane and her creative director, Yvan Mispelaere, have continued their adventures in highly sophisticated color combinations: a pale mauve crepe caftan coat over a halter top of carrot crepe and pants the color of Morocco’s red earth, say, or an A-line tunic in teal, eau de nil, and brick. And beyond the fantasy there were plenty of real-life clothes, many with the sportif accent and attitude that permeates the current fashion mood after the London Olympics including a slouchy sweat pant and shirt in electric-green sequins.

Diane may have been looking back to her giddy youth in this collection, but this Thoroughly Modern Princess has her Louboutins firmly planted in the present and allows her mind to soar into the future. She took her finale victory lap with Mispelaere wearing a pair of Glass by Google glasses that had a tiny built-in camera set in the frame to record a Diane’s-eye view of the show and she led Google cofounder Sergey Brin from his seat to join them.