I would prefer to use the word free. I think the Dior thing is so much freer. There was not so much free about Jil's way of working.

My ideas for the next collection always happen a couple of months before the show. I have learned to shut up and not bother my assistants with it.

I have so much respect for John [Galliano]s technical skill and the fantasy, its just something that I dont find relevant now, especially when it restricts a woman, because in every other area they have so much freedom.

I find it fascinating to see the fact that women want to buy things that they see on men.

I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, "What should I do now?" It doesn't work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant. The difference is that once I was in Antwerp only doing two men's shows a year. And the weird thing is I thought I was busy then.

Contemporary art for me is a real driver; it propels us into the future. And at the same time, it's what connects us to the past, from a perspective of artistic evolution in which the succession of eras and styles gives meaning to creation.

I'm very scared sometimes that fashion might attack its own magic by the amount of exposure.