I like Adele, Mika, Natacha Atlas and a beautiful old record, 'An Evening with Belafonte/Mouskouri,' starring Harry Belafonte and Nana Mouskouri. What they have in common is they all have incredible voices. I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.

I wanted to create something that broke rules and made women feel confident and empowered.

High heels empower women in a way.

There's nothing I liked visually of the period I was a child. There was no dream in it, and nothing sparkled.

I never was interested in being part of the fashion world - I just wanted to design shoes. I didn't even know Vogue existed when I was growing up. Vogue, what is that?

My father, who was a cabinetmaker, told me, 'Wood has a grain and if you go into the grain, you have beauty. If you go against it, you have splinters - it breaks.' And I took that as my view of life. You have to follow the grain - to be sensitive to the direction of life.

Listen, to appeal to someone else you might put on a pair of shoes that you don't like or a dress you don't like. But there's no way you're going to put on a perfume you don't like; it's too personal.