ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: Glam Rock by Diane von Furstenberg F/W 2013/14

“Be the woman you want to be,” has been Diane von Furstenberg’s mantra from the moment she shook up Manhattan’s fashion landscape with her iconic 1974 wrap dress.

This season, von Furstenberg returned to her roots with a woman-friendly collection set to a disco beat that evoked, as she said, “the girl I used to be,” and proved how refreshing it is, in a season of hard-edged eighties-inspired power dressing and ultra-demanding silhouettes, to see the work of a designer who firmly believes that “your clothes are your friends.”

This meant gently modernized evocations of just the sort of flattering pieces that von Furstenberg wore as a young jet-set princess, like the lamé-flickered chiffons of Saint Laurent and the sleek ultrasuedes of Halston in a monochrome palette spiced with paprika, hot pink, and ultramarine. There was also a nod to the London of a glam rock–era David Bowie, with the androgynous boy-girl effect of a shrunken alligator-stamped golden tuxedo worn with an Op Art–print blouse and liquid pants or a slim black-and-white tweed and leather coat over metallic jeans.

London fashion fantasists Ossie Clark and Bill Gibb were evoked in the swirling appliqué motifs on sensuously cut jersey and georgette dresses, and von Furstenberg also cited the influence of the exotic hippie de luxe world of Nicolas Roeg’s 1968 date movie, Performance, featuring the beauteous Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg. “All the prints are going a little bit on an acid trip!” von Furstenberg exclaimed during a preview, and the distorted, overscaled moth and stylized wing patterns, and the designer’s signature chain-link motif, broken up into abstraction, proved her wry point.

As von Furstenberg’s smiling, upbeat girls strode out to the irresistible strains of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” and Andrea True’s “More, More, More,” it was easy to get swept up into the party mood, although the designer herself, who called her collection 'Glam Rock', was there to remind us that “it’s not that you are going to a party - life is a party!”