In prêt-à-porter now we understandably need to make the collection satisfy the big market more, so couture is extra special.

We didn't have a television, so we sat around the table, and me and my sisters and my mom would do these jobs, like, a penny for a piece, you know, these paper jobs. You know, what really saved me as a human today is my sisters and my mom.

I'm very well off but I can stay with normal people. I can do a super-luxury life, but I can do a very normal life and I'm not scared.

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 am close friends with Marina Abamovich, so I love strong, very aggressive political art. She is like a mom who wants to adopt me.

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.

In the beginning, I was very punk. I was very revolutionary. When they asked me to do Givenchy, I didn't want to do it. My friends pushed me. But the situation with my family was so bad financially. I really did it because, when they told me how much they would pay me, I saw that my sisters and my mom could have a better life.