If I'm in Italy I'm going to have a cappuccino and two small brioches and then a mix of orange and grapefruit. I don't drink tea in Italy.

The designer side of me has many ideas on how the shoes or woman should look, but the man is thinking 'would I want to see my girl in those shoes?'

When I started to work on perfume, I could not reduce the idea of a woman to one smell.

I never wanted to work in fashion. At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater! And I was crazy for the Hollywood of the 1950s: Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones. They were my idea of glamour - and Sylvie Vartan, the French singer.

When a woman puts on a heel, she has a different posture, a different attitude. She really stands up and has a consciousness of her body.

In France you cannot not have lunch. If you stopped the French from having lunch, you will have a second revolution, I can tell you this. Not going to work - it is part of the French privilege.

I prefer buying things and figuring out where to put them later than regretting not buying them.