Even if things look very precise and very organized, chaos is always there. But I like the moment of chaos to be at the beginning. I cannot deal with the chaos at the end.

In the office, I actually act quite demented the whole day. Like Monty Python. That's my favorite kind of humor. My assistants sometimes ask me to leave.

I always like to make sense of things that, in theory, would not make any sense together. It's true that the core of Calvin Klein has been . . . I don't want to say conservative, but real clothes that are worn by everybody.

There are many things Calvin Klein would have never done - he would have never put men in leggings in a show; he would have never done a fluorescent suit - but these are things that are right for the moment. For example, a fluorescent suit is graphic, and Calvin Klein is about being graphic. And Calvin Klein is always modern at its core, so I inject my own research and my own innovation, and I make it my own. But I never deny that core, because that would be stupid.

Of course, we always get references from the past, but that doesn't mean that the clothes have to look like the past. We need to look forward, which is why I'm fascinated by new materials, technologies, techniques, and unusual ways to use colors or textures. It's very applicable to Calvin Klein because Calvin Klein has always been about modern-ness.

I have to admit, I am aware of my Latin roots now. In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion . . . But I really enjoy this contrast. I can go from Lady Gaga to Brian Eno in a split second.

I have a very small team by choice, because I don't believe in teams of 55,000 people.