Men can get jobs from one country to another, they can get in. But the people who always fell through the cracks were women and children, especially when you are displaced. I've always said, 'I am the face of a refugee.'

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.

That to be an activist, you have to stay active. For me, it's profound; it's not something you choose to do every five years because it's chic to say it.

We grew up as poor people but we never knew poverty. I still love and miss the Somalia I grew up in. Things changed, when my father became a diplomat later on.

I come from Somalia. We start working young, and we understand that kind of life. I would be bored to death not doing anything creative.

Bethann Hardison has been my collaborator, my closest friend, we've gone through starting businesses, losing businesses, kids, divorces, marriages, and she was my maid of honor when I married my husband, David Bowie. And she's still such a part of my life. This is the person when it's totally dark, outside and inside, this is the person I would call.