I started to draw and design clothes that I couldn't find, because everything was all luxury, fashion clothes or very straight. So I mixed all of that together: Who says I can't put a man in a skirt? Who says that a man can't wear lace? Who says that men can't wear Swarovski? Who says that men can't wear makeup? You know what I'm like; for me, straight, gay, women, men, trans, we're all the same. I don't see difference.

No matter how much people in fashion think we're so cool and avant-garde, for most fashion people, creativity is quite taboo.

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.

Every two to three weeks, I was changing around my room. My room was made out of nothing, basically - a magazine, a little radio, a little bed - and I had the sensibility to put things together and match things in a certain way so that they were very special.

My mom always said to us, "You cannot judge anybody because of the color of skin." There were a lot of African immigrants in Italy at the time, and people would not even say hi in the street. And my mom, she would invite these people to the house. This is what I got from my mom: to not judge people because of their sexuality, their skin color, their religion, nothing.

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.

To leave Italy at 17 without money and go to a country like England is very rare; Italians stay with the family until 30, 35. But I couldn't stand to live in this box anymore. I was getting bigger, and the box was getting smaller.