If you are an activist, you have to stay active on a daily basis.

I'm quite insufferable about fitness, I suppose. I think it's really important, though I'm not a body nut.

My father taught me how to be a parent and gave me a positive connection with men because he is a gentleman.

I came from a background where I was very poor growing up but I have never known poverty. My parents worked hard and they went to bed hungry, but they fed us. Then my father became an ambassador, so I ended up being driven by chauffeurs. And then we became refugees. After that, I looked at it through this "glass" of to have and have not, and at the end of the day, who actually helps, who actually steps up, who is there for you.

No one is calling any of these designers racist. The act itself is racist. There were more black models working in the Seventies than there are in 2013. This a time when silence is not acceptable at all. If the conversation cannot be had publicly in our industry, then there is something inherently wrong.

When 9/11 happened, 12 of our neighborhood firemen were killed. I looked around at the country that had adopted me and I became an American.

The one thing I know for a fact - some days are bad, some days are okay, and I'll go with it. If it's bad, I stay in and ride the wave and somehow, God gets me through and I'm fine. Dealing with grief doesn't work from one person to the other, it's so personal.