When I was far away, when I prayed every night, I felt I was very near with my heart, with my brain, to my sisters and my mom.

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

I’m very faithful to myself. When you do things that are true it just comes out quite instinctively.

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.

In Italy, especially in '70s and '80s, there was a lot of racism between north and south. And my mom immigrated from the south to the north, from Puglia, the heel of Italy. But what made me feel different was society, not my family.

Couture is also a matter of respect. In the end, all of these women sewing and embroidering the clothes, whom are almost all my mother's age, they're all 70 or 80 years old, have been here for a lifetime. They spend hours on it and come up with solutions. And because it's on a catwalk, people see if for five seconds and don't even see the technique, the drapery.

My definition of beauty is something between extremely ugly and extremely fantastic.