I do the final fitting because the client wants me there. They're not spoilt, they really understand that you're very busy, but they just want you to say what you think - for just ten minutes. They really want to know your opinion because it really is a service at the end of the day, a luxury service.

I've got what I want, and I've got the luck to express myself and to be paid and to do what I do as a creative person.

When I started at 9, I was working with plaster. I worked with a florist. It was a little illegal for kids to work. They would give you tips because they couldn't really give you wages.

Couture is also a matter of respect. In the end, all of these women sewing and embroidering the clothes, whom are almost all my mother's age, they're all 70 or 80 years old, have been here for a lifetime. They spend hours on it and come up with solutions. And because it's on a catwalk, people see if for five seconds and don't even see the technique, the drapery.

I was a very nice boy. I was well-educated ... very Catholic family. So I was very respectful, never late at work. I was always the last one to leave. It's always been that way in my life.

I always think about the streets because that's where I come from and that's where I'm going to die one day. That is my life.

I've always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human - like mermaids and Minotaurs - because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life.