I am one who is very meridione - Southern Italian. I am proud of this. I design everything with my team, which is fantastic and small. I design by look. For example, people always comment to me, "When you do men's shirts, you always keep them closed on the catwalk." That's my thing.

With couture you have faithfulness - people are faithful to you. In couture, you will see that the cut looks like a lace dress from a distance, but it's only when you get nearer you understand that it's layers of lace, hand stitched in a certain shape, all the work - the zips, the buttons, the hooks... it goes on.

I’m very faithful to myself. When you do things that are true it just comes out quite instinctively.

For me, aesthetically, Donatella Versace represent what the Italian woman is. There is always the American rock thing, the aristocratic, above-the-rest British manner, but Italy is at the heart of it.

I didn't have many friends. I was very shy ... And, then, even worse, when I was 14 I became Gothic. I had long, black hair. I was going to school with makeup. Because I was trying to find my language, to scream to the world that I felt so closed in a box where I was living.

The elegance of the Italian South is a very strong elegance and it is one that I bring. It is a sexy elegance - or at least, let's say less chaste.

It's super-essential. Even though I don't have a very big team, for me, the word muse may be démodé or not. I adore it, but I am also one, in my delirium, to be quite classical. For a designer - especially a male designer - he absolutely has to have that female voice by his side, which he listens to, he filters, he digests. It's a huge need, because when you see through the eyes of a man, you see a woman a certain way, and how they have little tricks of their own.