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.

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.

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.

I remember Grace (Coddington) looking at me and said, 'Can you do something?' and I was like, 'OK, how long do you give me?' and she said 'Half an hour?', I said 'Forty-five minutes?'

Why isn't Tilda Swinton on the covers of tons of magazines? Well, she's not that. It isn't her thing. But I don't know. I think that suddenly a time came when models, after the Linda Evangelista crowd, and Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington, when the models for me became a bit bland. But I think more than that, the culture changed. The movies, television, music, and all of those things - those people were more visual and therefore more interesting.

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've always been fascinated by people's capacity to care. Everyone has a different capacity for it. Some people can take on more and deal with more. Today, with the economy, I have such respect for the hard work that has to be done. But we're on this planet and we have a responsibility to ourselves to care.