Taking la dolce vita as her theme for New York Fashion Week, the American designer Diane von Furstenberg turned her focus on grown-up glamour. Her spring/summer 2006 collection had no trace of any hippy, bohemian inspirations and almost side-stepped the famous "wrap" dress that has become her signature.

Instead, the designer offered the film star style of Rome in the 1960s, with fitted dresses that emphasised cleavage, waist and hips; neat pencil-skirted suits and strapless gowns worthy of a young Sophia Loren or Anita Ekberg.

The collection "captures a certain moment in my life - the moment I discovered glamour for the first time," she said, referring to when she first went to Rome.

"I was 20. It was fabulous: the parties, the palazzos, the paparazzi, the aristocrats, all the film people, the world of Fellini."