I was going to the flea markets to buy furniture. It was getting done the way it was getting done - on a small scale and with a lot of soul and heart and risk. We did fashion like fashion was done before - spontaneously, with joy and freedom, and that's what created our identity.

Well, that's why I really love Diego Della Valle, because he's crazy. Instead of going out to find a top business school graduate, for whom it would have taken five years to see the difference between a ballet shoe and a book, he asked me to revive the label. It's a bit like Balenciaga. Brands like Vivier are pillars - they are monuments of fashion; they are names we don't forget. But the general public doesn't necessarily know that and therefore we had to get the name re-known.

Often something more simple would be better. Sometimes I put things together - a shirt, a sweater, a jacket - and it's too complicated. I would have worn only a v-neck sweater, it would have been better. It's not the clothes but it's how you wear them sometimes.

It's important to keep up the idea of the brand, even beyond sales.

I was going to the flea markets to buy furniture. It was getting done the way it was getting done - on a small scale and with a lot of soul and heart and risk. We did fashion like fashion was done before - spontaneously, with joy and freedom, and that's what created our identity.

People imagine I am always in a Bentley with pearls and diamonds and black glasses and Karl Lagerfeld next to me.

It is true that in France, women put on less things. If they have a necklace, they don't put on earrings; if they have nail polish, they don't put on all their rings and all their bracelets.