People usually forget that fashion designers are not artists, but there is an artistic side that is very strong in my point of view. At the same time, you have to be so organized and so serious. There are two aspects that are quite big contradictions, strangely, in what I'm doing.

For me, I go somewhere for three days, and then I come back and I want to change everything, and so it's a fight with everybody. I'm transforming and convincing. It's more than designing. It's shaking people and trying to give them direction. I'm a bit of a control freak. This is a problem as I get older, and it's something I should work on. I should be more confident - learn to trust people and give them freedom and delegate.

Strangely, meanness pays more than offering constructive and interesting commentary. Every season I think, "This is the last season. I'm not gonna read tomorrow morning. Forget it." The first thing when I wake up - quite late, usually - I am craving the newspaper.

To look deeply into the lawn and see six shades of green - there is hardly that respite for you. And that's our job that we're doing. And it's even more demanding for someone like yourself, who is so extremely creative. But you have to move forward. You cannot just wallow or sit back and take in the accolades. They're wonderful, the accolades, and you appreciate them. But then you go on to the next moment. You have to always be going out to the end of the diving board and diving off.

With my designs and my ideas, I want to please myself first. I'm always very stressed about making a new proposition every season. But in a way, it's a kind of addiction. In another way, it's a crazy pressure. I try to stay quiet about the whole situation, because fashion itself can be crazy, and everyone wants a part of you.

I believe there is a moment growing up when you build your own mood board. You do a collage - you collect a few things, a few images that will be so important for your future choices. Not only aesthetic, or what you like for dressing, but your artistic choices. The room where I put papers and pictures and posters on the walls when I was a kid, it's still very strong in my head today. This movie poster or that portrait of a girl I took from a magazine, deep inside, is inspiration that comes back all the time.

Never forget that what becomes timeless was once truly new.