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.

In spite of the fact that everyone thinks I am very much a rottweiler - that i am very dark and everything - I have a side that is very romantic that i show to very few people.

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.

I've had this sensibility since I was a child. If there was a black boy in the school, I was the friend. If there was an effeminate guy, I was the friend. If there was somebody who was poor like me, I was the friend.

I didn't know I was going to become a designer; I was going to become a successful person, but I really wanted to be free.

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

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