If I am in fashion, it is really due to very few designers that I admire - not because I don't like the rest, or that the rest are not beautiful, but because I am very selective. I adore Versace. I adore Helmut Lang, despite the fact that it's over.

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

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

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.

I brought a lot of the codification of womenswear to menswear. Why? Because when I was a child, I was wearing women's clothes adjusted to me.

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.

When I do a show I have such high emotion; the energy is amazing - but, people don't really see the details and the work and the experimentation that we, the designers, put into the clothes. With prêt-à-porter you're having a look.