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?'

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.

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 love this idea of being able to touch people with something quite familiar, something quite emotional, and at the same time, have the feeling that this is a new way of doing it, a fresh way of showing things. I like radical people. At the same time, I'm fascinated by popularity, people who were able to have huge success and also keep their consistency.

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.

Naturally looking at something will become so important in your aesthetic. For that, you have to be disciplined, too, in the way that there is a moment to catch and there is a moment to express. The moment to express has to be so pragmatic, because you have to build the clothes; you have to be very, very specific about how you want to describe to other people, for the color of the fabric, the way of sewing things, putting things together.

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.