There is always the new project

  It is important to be chic. Luxury will be always around, no matter what happens in the world. I didn't want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn't like it. I always wanted to do other things. You're only as good as your last collection, which is an enormous pressure. The great thing about fashion is that it always looks forward.

Fashion never stops. There is always the new project, the new opportunity. I love to design things that people can actually buy. I'm staggered by what a boot costs today. First I made a dress because I was pregnant and I wanted to be the most beautiful pregnant woman. Then I made a sweater because I wanted to have one that wasn't like anyone else's. In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different. People said making clothes inside out was not proper. I disagreed, because clothes that are inside out are as beautiful as a cathedral.



I am not interested in shock tactics. I just want to make beautiful clothes. I sometimes feel that a pattern is almost a fashion statement in itself. Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way. We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great. The key to my collections is sensuality.

I couldn't love a woman who inspired me to be totally disinterested. If I fell in love with a woman for an artistic reason, or from the point of view of my work, I think it would rob her of something. You can only go forward by making mistakes. If you cut a painter's hands off, he'd still feel the urge to pick up a brush. Luxury will be always around, no matter what happens in the world. It's really easy to get colors right. It's really hard to get black - and neutrals - right. Black is certainly a color but it's also an illusion.