Helmut Lang is an amazing man - always striving, always moving forward.

I think movies also played a part in my interest in fashion. I've also always been hooked on the movies. From my early teens on, I always had my favorite movie stars who I admired, like Carole Lombard and Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, and the men in my life who I loved, like Gary Cooper.

When I graduated from school, World War II was still going on. At the time, my eldest sister, Nancy, was working in New York City at Lord & Taylor, and she had a great friend named Sally Kirkland who she worked with there and who later went to work as an editor at Vogue. I always told them, "I want to work in fashion like you do," and finally, in the late '40s, I got a job at Lord & Taylor, too.

Have you ever held a snake? Well, let me tell you, it is so erotic.

I always took a great interest in my clothes. My sister, who was 13 months older, and I always dressed alike, but as I got a little bit older, I didn't like that because I wanted to dress differently. So our mother would put Patty in blue and Polly in pink, or we would wear complementary colors, but the shapes we were wearing were always the same, and I was very interested in that. I also took great interest in my dolls and their clothes.

I think that there are people who go to the best stores, and they have money, so money is no object, but they can't find a pretty dress - and I think that's their problem because the dresses are out there somewhere. So I think the answers to these questions lie somewhere in there.

I think there a lot of great photographers working right now in the 2010. At the same time I do occasionally feel a great disappointment in some of the things that I see from certain people. But it is today.