S ⁘Favourite Designer⁘ Who Is ⁘Best Since Yves Saint Laurent*

He typed: "I wore his clothes all the time. I'd discovered his little shop in Milan at the end of the eighties and immediately became obsessed. He continued: "I thought I had stumbled across a genius, the greatest menswear designer since Yves Saint Laurent. He used the very best materials, but there was nothing starchy or po-faced about his designs: he made men's clothes that were fun to wear.

"My already high opinion skyrocketed when I was introduced to the man behind them. Meeting Gianni was almost weird, like finding out I had a long-lost twin brother in northern Italy. We were virtually identical: same sense of humour, same love of gossip, same interest in collecting, same unquiet mind. He couldn't switch off; he was always thinking, always coming up with some new way of doing what he did, which was everything."

Elton said he was furious then and began to worry that Diana was "losing touch with all sorts of really close friends, surrounding herself instead with people who told her what she wanted to hear".

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