ON the first day she arrived in Beijing for a two-week trip in China, American designer Diane von Furstenberg signed up for a Sina weibo account, a Chinese microblog equivalent of Twitter.

That was March 23. By Monday (April 4) before she flew back to New York, she already had more than 22,000 followers, after posting 32 tweets in English on the Chinese language-based platform - although it's a far cry from her fantasy of "selling one T-shirt to every Chinese," as she once told The New York Times. (Today she has one DVF luxury lifestyle boutique in Shanghai and three in Beijing.)

At 64, von Furstenberg is still very active, eager to try new things and share her legendary life with people from around the world.

A week ago, she launched "Journey of a Dress," a retrospective exhibition of her life and career since the 1970s - when she invented the iconic, "easy to put on, even easier to take off" wrap dress - at Beijing's Pace Gallery. More than 1,000 people flocked there in the capital city's 798 art zone on the opening night.

The exhibition, which runs through May 14, features more than 80 vintage and contemporary dresses from the designer's personal archives along with letters, photographs, illustrations and ephemera that evoke moments in her life. They range from a Francesco Scavullo photo from the height of the disco era at Studio 54, to the Obama family's 2009 Christmas portrait by Annie Leibovitz featuring First Lady Michelle Obama in a DVF wrap dress.

It also includes portraits of the fashion diva by some of the most celebrated artists in the past four decades such as Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, Mario Testino, Helmut Newton and Chuck Close.

The exhibition debuted in Moscow's Manezh Central Exhibition Hall in Red Square in 2009 and traveled to Sao Paulo last year. Beijing is the third stop.

Von Furstenberg says the idea of organizing the exhibition came from her dear friend, Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova.

"Natalia told me that everybody does fashion shows nowadays, but people in Russia, just like people in China, would very much like to know about the 1970s and 1980s when the world was so different on the other side," she said. "They wanted to see Andy Warhol, and they wanted to learn about Studio 54."

The designer decided to use the iconic wrap dress, which she created almost 40 years ago but is still relevant today, as the "thread" to tell the stories of a woman who was once married to a prince and was the muse for a multitude of artists.

To add local flavor, she invited four Chinese artists, including conceptual artist Zhang Huan, photographer Hai Bo, painter Li Songsong and multimedia artist Zhou Yi, to create works based on her image.

"The exhibition not only incorporates fashion and art, but is also a celebration of East and West," she told Shanghai Daily when she was in town to prepare for her "Red Ball," a dazzling, star-studded gala in artist Zhang Huan's pipe factory-turned studio on the outskirts of Shanghai on March 31.

"I love China so much," she said. "Chinese women are so beautiful ... They have good bodies and they are very strong ... I'm inspired by strong women ... I think Chinese women are stronger than any other women."

She was dressed elegantly in a knit dress of geometric prints in navy blue and yellow, a long wool sweater and high-heeled sandals.

While posing for photographs on the terrace of her Peninsula Hotel suite, she returned to the idea of strong women - she herself was an emblem of female empowerment for decades.

"I think all women are strong. They just don't show it. But when something very bad happens, it is always the woman that stands out."

For the exhibition, Zhang Huan created three ash paintings - a labor-intensive process using ashes collected from Buddhist temples in Shanghai, sorted into piles of different colors and applied to canvas. The subjects are an American flag, a Chinese flag, and a portrait of von Furstenberg based on her photograph by Peter Lindbergh for the October 2009 issue of Harper's Bazaar.

Li Songsong, known for his thick impasto paintings, created an oil portrait inspired by a portrait of the designer that appeared on the cover of Interview magazine in March 1977.

Hai Bo recently photographed her at his studio in the outskirts of Beijing, while Zhou Yi has created an original 3D video work featuring an all-white woman constantly blowing women in different shapes out of her mouth.

Sophisticated art collector that she is, von Furstenberg, however, prefers to be called "a collector of memories and friendship."

Sitting next to me on the couch during the interview, she would place her hand on mine from time to time to show her concern.

"All these people who painted and photographed me have become my friends," she said cheerfully.

Many of her close friends jetted off to China to attend her "Red Ball" event in Shanghai and the retrospective opening in Beijing, including Wendi Murdoch, Natalia Vodianova and actresses Jessica Alba and Zhang Ziyi, together with the designer's husband, American media mogul Barry Diller.

"Wendi (Murdoch) told me that I should give a big party in China and people would love it," she explained. "Pearl Lam (one of the most influential Chinese contemporary art collectors based in Shanghai) also suggested that I do the party in Shanghai since the exhibition is in Beijing.

"Shanghai and Beijing are like two sisters ... they are equally important to me," she continued. "I opened my first store on the Chinese mainland in Shanghai."

What she had in mind for the "Red Ball" was not "old time balls in the hotel rooms" but something futuristic and bizarre, "just like a dream."

She and French fashion and furniture designer Alexandre de Betak transformed Zhang Huan's suburban studio in Songjiang District into a sumptuous fantasy land of gigantic Buddhas, red draperies, Chinese lanterns, a reflecting pool and a harpist. There was even a Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) temple where dancers staged a performance choreographed for the event by leading Chinese dancer/choreographer Jin Xing.

Hundreds of red paper bags lighted by candles were placed at the entrance to create a red-carpet effect. Red jars were arranged on the ground in the shape of the DVF logo, echoing the Chinese lanterns bearing the iconic DVF design prints hung from the ceiling.

Chinese dream

"Twelve years ago I went to New York and found my American dream," artist Zhang said in a speech at the gala in his studio. "Today, Diane has come to China to realize her Chinese dream."

"When I was a little girl, I always dreamed about China ... Today is a celebration of the many people who can have dreams and make them happen," said von Furstenberg in her speech. "As Zhang Huan once said: 'It's the phoenix and the dragon' ... He's the dragon and I'm the phoenix!"

Among the exhibits at the Beijing retrospective is an out-sized, close-up portrait of the designer by American photorealist Chuck Close. It was taken in January, six weeks after she suffered a skiing accident that left her with a broken nose and fractured cheekbones.

The picture shows age, wrinkles and slightly injured cheekbones - a very sharp contrast to stunning portraits of her taken 20 or 30 years ago in the same room.

Unlike most celebrities today, the 64-year-old has never had any cosmetic surgery and has no plans to. She is very much at ease about changes in her appearance and enjoys the process of aging.

"I've always liked wrinkles," she said in a previous interview with Harper's Bazaar. "When I was a young girl, I used to make lines on my face with my nails because I loved Jeanne Moreau. I always wanted to be older; I always added years to my life. For the longest time, if people thought I was older, I would take it as a compliment."

"Beauty is perfect in its imperfections, so you just have to go with the imperfections," she said.

In 2005, von Furstenberg was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Design of America (CFDA) for her impact on fashion, and one year later, was elected president of CFDA. Since then, she has been spotting and nurturing homegrown American fashion designers.

In February, she said she was "disappointed" that First Lady Michelle Obama didn't wear a dress by an American designer but an Alexander McQueen gown to a state dinner with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

She was quoted as saying: "I was so embarrassed that I am definitely going to write to her ... She (Obama) has been super supportive to American designers."

And now, the CFDA president hopes to help open channels between Chinese and American designers.

"I definitely want to do that (spotting and nurturing local designers) in China," she said. "There are a lot of talents here, and we'd like to launch exchange programs ... Nowadays, we have so many talented Chinese American designers in the US."

Her very young grandchildren, whom she expects to take over her fashion empire when she retires, traveled with her to China this time. On her Sina weibo, von Furstenberg described places they visited, including the Shanghai Museum, Zhujiajiao water town, Suzhou gardens, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace in Beijing.

"This exhibition is not just about showing Chinese people my body of work, but also about showing my family, my life," she said.

"I'm very happy and proud that my family and my grandchildren are here so that they can see the retrospective with me alive instead of me being dead!"

Life of a legend

Born in Brussels, Belgium, Diane von Furstenberg met her first husband, Prince Egon von Furstenberg, the elder son of a German prince, at university when she was 18. The couple moved to New York after they married in 1969, and she became a princess.

Von Furstenberg arrived in the fashion world in the early 1970s with her invention, the iconic wrap dress in bright patterns. By 1976, she had sold millions of her dresses, which landed the 29-year-old on the cover of Newsweek.

Like many other ambitious young entrepreneurs, she was eager to expand her empire. But the business grew too fast and the market was saturated by the early 1980s.

In 1985, she moved to Paris and founded Salvy, a French-language publishing house.

When she returned to the US in the 1990s, von Furstenberg was surprised to find a new generation of hip young women in their twenties were buying DVF dresses in vintage shops.

In 1997, she reentered the New York fashion scene by re-launching the dress that started it all.

Today, DVF is a global lifestyle luxury brand with 42 freestanding DVF boutiques worldwide, including one in Shanghai and three in Beijing.

In 2001, she married American media tycoon Barry Diller. She is the grandmother of three children.

In 2005, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Design of America (CFDA) for her impact on fashion, and one year later, was elected president of CFDA.

Her 1998 autobiography, "Diane: A Signature Life," will be published in Chinese soon.