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 don't find it difficult anymore, because these days, Raf is only men and Dior is only women. I found it much more complicated when I was doing Jil Sander for men and women. It wasn't that it was the same, but I'm specific about where I want to go, and when you suddenly have to do two men's collections in the same moment, that was more difficult.

The future, for me, is romantic, I don’t understand people who say the past is romantic. Romantic, for me, is something you don’t know yet, something you can dream about, something unknown and mystical. That I find fascinating.

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.

I'm shy, but not on a one-to-one basis. Over the years, I have become acclimatised to a bit of publicity.

My mother was a cleaning lady all her life.

I know this independence is what people like most about my brand.