I love art. I love music. It's more about the lifestyle you yourself have - that's the most inspiring thing. The way you share relationships with the people around you.

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.

You need something that puts a little distance between what you really are and what you want to show; it's a shield, a protection.

I grew up in such a small city, I had to be popular or I'd be dead. So I had to be popular!

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 have a quality where I sort of scare people. But I am who I am.

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.