Seduction is about intelligence and wit. Someone who makes me laugh has every chance to seduce me.

In the beginning, to be honest I was super-scared. I turned up and took a step back and said, 'I am here to learn,' and I feel the same today. I've got only to learn from these people because they have been doing couture for 30 or 40 years, so I keep learning every season.

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.

I love finding new things. I love the conceptual aspect of Antony Hegarty or the voices of those back in the day like Lil' Kim, Missy Elliott, Ciara. I love what evokes emotion in me.

When I went to England, to Saint Martins, I was traumatized, in a positive way. It was that British sense of transgression and the dark. Then when I went to Paris, I was doing couture, which everyone was saying was finished. Bullshit! For me, in the end, it was all a mixing of ingredients.

Black is always elegant. It is the most complete colour in the whole world, made of all the colours in the palette.

I am super-Italian, not even European - Italian. And this is very precise. It's like houses. Over time they stabilize themselves in the terrain. I am still at the first step of a long staircase.