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

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.

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.

Actually, I'm probably 99-and-a-half percent plastic now.

I realized the importance of archiving. So I save key pieces from my collections, as well as any red-carpet things that become iconic. I always ask for that stuff back. I'm like, "It's going in my archives."

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.

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.