There are few plants that are ugly. It's how you use them that may not be pretty.

Designing is always on the mind of a designer, and as I was saying it's a sort of digestive process, so I usually keep it to myself unless I'm collaborating with someone because explaining all the things that are going on in your head can be quite exhausting, especially in the early stages of a project.

The thing I always try to remember is that feet are attached to the leg, and that you must prolong the silhouette. The shoe elongates the leg and does it discreetly. The goal is to get people to look at a woman's legs. It's all about the leg. No, it's not about the leg. It's about the woman.

I perfectly understand the obsession with shoes. I myself am pretty obsessed. I have a few hundred pairs of shoes in general, because I've been collecting shoes for a long time.

I always loved fish for the colors and birds for the plumage. In the same way, I loved those women of the cabaret. They were birds of paradise.

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.

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?