Couture is emotion. Couture is freedom. Couture is not thinking about pricing and not thinking about craziness. You can do whatever you want to do in couture.

I can give a beautiful present, and that may change the lives of people around me.

For me, fashion is a job. I love it. It's my passion. But the most important thing for me in general is life.

When I started, everyone said couture was finished and I was so scared. Actually I was more terrorized than scared. I was arriving from a provincial area of Italy. They called me in to do Givenchy and I just thought, Wow.

Even at the beginning when I arrived at Givenchy, there were certainly people who supported me, but not everyone loved me. They were saying, "Why an Italian who acts Gothic?" Never mind the fact that Italy is one of the main exhibitors of Gothic art in the world. But it was like, "No, Italians should only do sexy!"

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.

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.