It's the only thing I really enjoy - so fresh, even now that I'm doing the new sampling. I'm dying to go to the factory, which is like nobody's idea of fun. But it's mine.

I wish I was making shoes instead of reading or watching movies, which is what I do in my free time.

The most tragic moment of my life was the first show I ever designed for. I had been asked to make shoes for Ossie Clark's show in the early '70s. I was so inexperienced that I didn't put the steel in the heels of the shoes, which is required to support the shoe and the wearer. So the girls came out walking very strangely in these rubber, bendy high-heeled shoes I had made. I thought 'Oh dear god! This is the end of me.' But after the show, even David Hockney and Cecil Beaton said to me 'It was so interesting that the girls were moving in such a different way.'

I'm not very nostalgic, you see. I just don't think anybody has that kind of thing anymore. By culture, by breeding, by whatever, it's not there. The kids today-what the hell are they going to be? I like young people - yes, I do. But when I talk to people at the schools, and they say, "I saw you on the Twit," I don't even know what they are talking about.

The only people that come to my mind in the last years are Lee McQueen and John Galliano. Truly, truly . . . How do I say? Full of ideas. Full of the smell. They just had this incredible passion for what they did.

I don't even think about the word. But I do have certain things where I just go, "Aaaaahhh," irritatingly boring and insistent because I want it to look that way and I can do it - I don't even know if you'd call it passion or obsession. Obsession, possibly, but I really love what I do.

Remain dignified, dress well, be good to other people and you’ll be fine.