I remember once I didn't like a dress that we had to shoot - I'll never forget this - and so I turned it inside out and put it on the model backward.

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.

You have to want to dare being a model. You have to dare or you don't go that step further. You have to be willing to stretch - and to not only be willing to stretch, but to want to stretch.

I do think there is a lack of modernity at the moment - and I don't even like that word, modernity, anymore. There aren't enough designers today anyway - there are more stylists.

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

I think Alexander McQueen was very, very special. When I went to his first show, I couldn't speak because I was so enthralled. I was saying to myself, "What am I looking at here? What's going on here?" Because, I'm really a loner. I've been a loner for a long time, because I guess I prefer that. For me to get the best out of myself, I have to trust my judgment. And so while watching an Alexander McQueen collection, I would feel isolated. Even though I was surrounded, I would still feel isolated by what I was looking at, if that makes sense.

They were enormously chic. My father was very chic. My mother was a heavy woman and she wore wonderful, bright colors, and pajamas, but when she was in town or in New York City or in Paris, she would wear navy blue or black. But there was a flamboyance to both of them.