I think Diana Vreeland recognized the passion and the energy I had. I stayed at Harper's Bazaar for two years, until I met my first husband and moved on to Philadelphia in 1952. But they were incredible years - wonderful, wonderful years. But, anyway, my career sort of took off from there. I was really blessed.

That's why you have to keep your mind open - so that you can be given the privilege to have five weeks in Japan and take all of that in. I mean, that's privilege to be able to do that. And you have to give that privilege back - it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the madding crowd.

I love street, adore street. Life is about mixing things and to be divine in the streets. Voila!

A lot of women say to me, "Polly, why aren't there more clothes out there that we can wear?" And I don't agree with them! There are clothes out there that they can wear - it's just that they don't dare to wear them.

I personally do not think that I have ever done, in my working life, anything vulgar. I know I've done provocative things.

I like people with guts. I want to feel in the clothes what the designer is really feeling when they're alone with themselves and their fabrics and they're drawings, and what happens when they let the creativity that they have been blessed with come forward. That's why they are who they are.

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.