I don't like perfection - I think it's dangerous. There is nothing after perfection.

Elegant is not what you wear, and it's not about how you wear it, but it's more about who you are.

Yves Saint Laurent gave women power, Chanel liberated them and when I joined Lanvin, I thought 'what do I bring to women? One day, I received an SMS from a friend in New York - she was in a taxi on the way to court to face her arsehole ex-husband, and she said to me 'Alber, I am wearing a Lanvin dress, and I feel so protected.' That to me was the biggest compliment I ever received. To have a 500 gram piece of silk make her feel protected - that made me very happy indeed.

I know amazing people in fashion who are anything but fake. They are very real and very sensitive. They are happy and sad. They are loyal friends.

I think that we are in a very strange time, when everybody is thinking about what is going to happen, and everybody is kind of cleaning house a little bit. In the fashion world, we are doing something similar. We are taking the fake out and being a little bit more real and simple.

I do sport at the gym a few times a week, but I hate it. Work is my only remedy. I feel so twisted and horrible in the morning, but then I go to the office and I start feeling better. Work is my Tylenol. Extra-strength.

I was a fat child; I was asthmatic. No wonder I'm a hypochondriac.