The woman should learn who she is and what she looks like and try to find the best points of dress accordingly. I also think that being appropriate has gone out of fashion. There are appropriate times to wear appropriate kinds of clothes.

I find that if I get up and push myself, I get lost in what I'm doing, and I forget about everything else until I stop doing it.

I’m a hopeless romantic. I buy things because I fall in love with them. I never buy anything just because it’s valuable. My husband used to say I look at a piece of fabric and listen to the threads. It tells me a story. It sings me a song. I have to get a physical reaction when I buy something. A coup de foudre – a bolt of lightning. It’s fun to get knocked out that way!

Society should emphasize personality. Accomplishment. Interest. Intelligent things. I think everybody should look as good as possible too.

I do have a dominant shopping gene but, unlike a reasonable person, I never plan for what I need each season. I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the discovery and the endless search. In another creation I was, perhaps, a hunter/gatherer. After all these years, I’ve learned that it’s not the end result or finished product but the process I most enjoy. If my experimenting, searching and juxtaposing turns into an exciting outfit well, it’s just a big fat bonus!

I can't tell people how to have style. No amount of money can buy you style. It's just instinctive.

I've found that when I was young, all the pretty girls at school got all the dates and went to all the big parties and everything because they were pretty. They never bothered to develop anything. And as they aged, their prettiness faded and they were left as middle-aged women who were very, very unhappy and disappointed. But I can't feel sorry for them because that was their own doing.