Are any of the works on view from your personal collection?

All of them.

Are you going to acquire the Chinese artworks?

Yes! Yes!

Tell me about yourself as a collector, then — your collecting style.

Well, I kind of like to think I'm not a collector because there's something extensive about a collector. But I do collect friends and all these artists are my friends and that is what is always special — when a collection is personal, because it's a reflection of your time and everything that you have lived. For example, Francesco Clemente always wanted to paint me and we kept on making appointments and then I would cancel, or he would cancel, or whatever. Then the day I knew I was becoming a grandmother and my daughter-in-law was being induced for labor I said, "Francesco, let's do it that way. I want you to paint me the day I become a grandmother." Or with Warhol, the first portrait taken of me was at one in the morning, in my apartment, in my kitchen. It's clearly a personal show, but it's because of my life throughout four decades that it's so interesting when you look at it, because whether it is the clothes, or whether it is the paintings, or whether it is the photographs or the illustrations, or the graphics of the magazines, you can really define the different decades. China today is basically the same as we are here, but in the last four decades it was not, and therefore that is why I think it is interesting to them.

Do you think the references like Studio 54 resonate in China? Or are you introducing a certain Western cultural history?

Well, to young people, I mean, yes. Warhol is always what they want to know about.

Tell me more about the Warhols.

Oh the first one, the one he did in the 70s is my favorite. That one was one night in my apartment and he said, "Oh, let me take a Polaroid for a portrait." But he needed a white wall and I didn't have any white walls — there was only a white wall in the kitchen and because the wall was so small, I put my arm above my head. The second Warhol was I think in 1982 or 83 or something like that and he was preparing a show called "Beauty" and he called me in and made me put on white chalk, like the Kabuki white chalk — it was another style of his paintings. And he gave me one and I didn't particularly like it so I didn't get any more. And then, of course, when he died I bought all of them.

So the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai just closed an exhibition called "Culture Chanel." It's interesting that there are these surveys surrounding you and Chanel, these iconic figures in luxury goods and fashion design. Do you think there's a growing interest in this kind of thing in China?

Yes, everyone is interested in it China, clearly. I mean, mine is more, from what I can see, a little more alive. I mean with Chanel it clearly tries to humanize a brand. To let people know there is a story — this incredible woman who was an orphan and blah blah blah.

You don't think that your show serves a similar purpose?

It does that, but it's a very different style.

Why establish a presence in Beijing, then — as an individual, a character and artistic muse, as well as the head of a label?

It's China, you know, I'm fascinated by China. And I sell in China and clearly I'm interested in people knowing about me and my work in China.