High heels are pleasure with pain.

I was born 20 years after my eldest sister. I was the pampered child. That kind of love gives you an almost unbreakable backbone. My mother had three kids before me. She let me be completely free. I just never had anything to beat myself up over.

During breakfast there is something I cannot resist, apart from my boyfriend - it's actually the phone. I have a phone breakfast. Always. I call friends, boyfriend, family. Checking who is where. 'Is everything fine?' This is breakfast.

My job is designing shoes. It's work that happens behind the scenes, as they say, and that suits me just fine because in general I am a shy person. But sometimes I have these extroverted outbursts.

I really have not so much sympathy. If Tina Turner and Prince's back-up band can perform on stage in them for three hours, you can't tell me they are impossible to walk in. High heels are pleasure with pain. If you can't walk in them, don't wear them.

A shoe has so much more to offer than just to walk.

I feel I am a role model to many, not just for my designs, but also for the fact that I started my own company with the help of my two friends. I became a success story, and people relate to that.