But she loves fashion and respects designers too much to be negative. “I understand that designers, especially young ones, have to find a balance between creativity, wearability and [sales] but what worries me is that at this point they seem to be thinking only of [sales]. That is what is so tragic. It breaks my heart to see the wasted talent. But I don’t trash people. I don’t want to reduce their efforts by saying the end result is crap, even when it is perfectly clear that it is. Better to keep quiet.”
Diane Pernet was born in Washington DC and educated in Philadelphia at Temple University, where she took a degree in documentary filmmaking. Like so many young people in the late Seventies in America, she migrated to New York, where she lived on 17th and Broadway, right across from Andy Warhol’s Factory, and worked in film as a costume designer before setting up her own fashion business.