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

I was very preppy in my childhood. I also went through an anti-clothing moment where I just wanted to wear sweats because I'd just moved to Canada. My mom was always trying to get me into proper clothes, but I never wanted to wear them, and now that's all I wear.

When I was 12 or 13 I already knew that I was gay. And then my interests were not conventional. So I was very different, in every sense of the word. And in an all-boys school, that's tough.

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.

My inspirations come from everywhere. It's important to look at everything and anything.

I always have the TV on. When there's no TV, I play music. I like having noise. I think that's why New York is so suitable for me, because it's never really fully quiet.

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.