My mother was a huge influence on me - she was a free spirit and helped me appreciate, from a very early age, that everyone is different.

I hate the whole concept of comfort!

Designing my shoes, I'm thinking timeless. Not trendy.

I don't follow anything online. I am rather slow on that side.

I'd already decided I wanted to design shoes after I saw a sign in the Museum of African and Oceanic Art forbidding high heels. Well, who could resist?

I remain faithful to bourbon sour. It's absolutely delicious. You'd have to ask a bartender what's in it, but I think if you know you might never have a drink. I also love a little rum, 7 years aged, brown, when it is chilly, before dinner.

A woman tells a story with her clothes, but it's the shoe that carries her.