It is obvious from the photographs in the Dior Couture book, that Patrick Demarchelier loves taking pictures of beautiful women - yet his career came by accident, he says. His stepfather gave him his first camera when he was a teenager. Raised in Le Havre in northern France, he had a modest upbringing but the camera changed the course of his life. 'I took portraits of my friends. And when I was maybe 19 or 20, I moved to Paris,' he says.

Demarchelier first worked in a lab doing prints and then wound up being a photographer in a modelling school. He admits he knew little about fashion back then, but he began to work for other photographers and soon he was doing shoots of his own. His first fashion shoots in Paris were for Elle and Marie Claire in the early 1970s. Stuck in a rut, Demarchelier moved to New York in 1975 with a plan to stay six months - but his career took off after he first worked with Grace Coddington on British Vogue. 'It was a big breakthrough,' he says.

Then in 1989, he received a request from Princess Diana to take her picture - she had seen a photograph Demarchelier shot of a laughing boy tucked into the pocket of a model's coat; it was his son. The Princess 'was very charming,' he says, and the sitting resulted in a series of black and white photographs of Diana wearing a strapless dress, a tiara and a stunning smile. He remained her official portraitist until her death in 1997.