The minute it gets to a runway, you're tempted to do some high jinks. I don't want to show something I won't produce. I want people to wear the clothes I show.

My apartment looks like no one lives in it.

You make sexiness strong by balancing it out: something familiar with something unfamiliar, something masculine with something feminine, something streamlined with something rococo. It's a Yin and Yang. Women are made of layers, your mood shifts, no one is neither one extreme nor the other.

Great style means having a point of view, but evolving your look is even more important. Rushing to embrace every trend will leave you fashionable, but not stylish

Americans are always a little bit insecure.

I think the trick is, how do you spend time doing it but make it look like you haven't spent time doing it? Over the years you look at women like Lauren Hutton and everyone says: 'She just pulled her hair back and ran out of the door.' I've been in fittings with Lauren and she definitely thinks about it. She just knows how to make it look easy.

Seventy per cent of the clothes you own should be meat and potatoes. Thirty per cent should be icing and fluff - that's colour, pattern, shine, accessories. Too many women get the proportions the other way round, then can't figure out why they can't get dressed.