Fashion is made up of paradoxes. There was a key moment in fashion. When the Japanese first arrived - Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, and all - I have to humbly admit that I didn't understand the importance of it at all. It was Jean-Jacques Picart who explained it to me. They had a huge influence in that they showed that aestheticism could be different from prettiness, that there was beauty and that beauty was beyond pretty.

But overall when you work in fashion, you're always in a rush. You're always a little late, always in a hurry. Every single moment's important, so you never have enough time to do what you want to do. It's ridiculous.

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.

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

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.

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.

I think the essence of fashion is lightness, frivolity, and I'm very nostalgic for the time when Bérard was doing the windows, Cocteau was writing a play, Chanel did the costumes, Bérard did the sets. I don't have to tell you this, because Colette was the first to have revived the Rue St.-Honoré by precisely doing windows that attract people. And I really like that spontaneous spirit. And so, you're lucky to be with Colette, because it's a magic word.