I worked 10 years as a toy designer before I started my career as a fashion designer. It's something I just fell into and really liked.

The idea of transformation is super-important to me. You can see it in the way I approach things. I have never been a clean-faced, freshly scrubbed hair person. I'm the New York designer who doesn't do that. I think about the hair and makeup almost as much as I think about the clothes because it all has to work.

I don't collect things per se, but I do pick up things as I go. Like, in my studio I have an old sewing machine from Germany that my dad gave me, and then something else that I got from a friend in India, and a piece of flooring from one of my shows.

My parents are very comfortable with the way that I am, and I think they've always been. Without that, I don't think that I would have ever have been able to grow into the person that I am today. I never felt like I was hiding anything from them.

Buy things you truly love, things that are special, but not a lot of them. It’s about value, not quantity.

Being feminine in the way you dress doesn't have to compromise who you are as a woman or your career.

This is the hardest thing I've ever done, being in fashion business, because that's what it is at the end of the day, a business, and you have to make sure it works.