I don't like to go beyond modernity because you think girls might be like that in five years, but in five years what I see now is going to be old; we are always going to go somewhere else. You have to bring a few novelties within what will remain.

What is funny is when you do a futuristic movie, you immediately get to be fashionable because you're creating something that doesn't exist.

When I started at [Nina] Ricci, I did street wear for very cool, young girls but the price point was for the fourth floor of Bergdorf Goodman next to Carolina Herrera. My cool girls cannot afford it.

Everything I have is ready to wear, but I have the ability to have different options within the same brand. I have the Theyskens' Theory collection where it's a personal approach to how I build the collection where I fuse more fashion-y ideas and it has my name on it. So it's really something very research- and labor-intensive. And then I have the Theory brand where I infuse all points of view about fashion at large, and it's more global. It's really about making something succeed. You have an instant relationship with stores, and with sales teams, and people that are in the place.

For a long time I have been thinking about affordable fashion - you can be disappointed when not so many people can wear your stuff.

I've admired historical clothes like Victorian gowns since I was a child, and it's what motivated me to go into fashion.

I love to see what they [Michelle Obama and Kate Middleton] wear but I am not interested. It’s not natural. If you are a girl dressing up in the morning thinking about the whole world having a point of view on what you are wearing, it takes the pleasure out of getting dressed.