Your priority has to be the creativity - and build a brand. That's what everybody did - Balenciaga, Dior, Saint Laurent. That's the smart thing to do.

I think Rihanna is very interesting. But those people, the singers especially, know how to handle themselves because they're in the limelight. That's why it has grown into something where the model has stepped back - and I don't know if it's coming forward again.

Fashion, in a way, has become like pop culture today. With all of the communications and the Internet and the designers doing lines with big brands, it's more popular than it's ever been, but everything is all mixed together. It's become like television or music.

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.

It was time to come up here and retire with my wonderful husband, and my children and my grandchildren, and make that change. I'm not good at hanging on. When I make a decision to cut it off, I have to cut it off completely. I'm not good at, "Oh, I'll stick around and consult a little bit." I'm not good at that and I don't want to do that. I don't think you get anywhere doing that. I mean, I don't, although other people might. But that's not my personality. It's not my id. I have to make the break and be a good sport and adjust to it.

I grew up with the idea that once you found yourself with your clothes, why change?