You don't spend every day saying, "Gosh! That's so beautiful." Sometimes you look at an object more attentively and see it anew. I won't talk of any one object in particular. For me there is no hierarchy in art. Things have an inherent quality or they don't.

There's nothing that really motivates me anymore and demands that I get up in the morning. In the past it was Yves Saint Laurent.

Geographically speaking, I was born on a French island - the île d'Oléron. Otherwise, I come from a milieu where culture was of the utmost importance. I learned music even before I learned to read. I always read books beyond my years.

At the age of 9, I read David Copperfield by Dickens. At 14, I read War and Peace by Tolstoy. They're both books I have reread regularly since.

Yves Saint Laurent hated fashion. He loved style.

On my own account I certainly wouldn't have become the director of a couture house. I didn't have sufficient admiration for fashion as such to have done so.

I met Andy Warhol in the '60s, a wonderful time, with wonderful people. There was Fred Hughes, and Jed Johnson, who I liked a lot. Jed Johnson decorated my apartment in New York, at the Pierre. It was his first job.