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.

We are Italian. We are all little tribes - not only in fashion, but also in music - in everything, basically.

I arrived here, with a destroyed house, with nothing. I had to do everything very slowly. And with a little team and a great president, we achieved a lot. I am happy here. For now, it is still Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, and I think that it will be for a long time, because it will be difficult to evict me from my house. I feel good here!

What I very much admire about the Versace maison, and what I am still trying to learn to do myself as I am still young, is that from day one until today, Versace is the peak of sexy but never crosses that red line into the vulgar.

Religion and love don't have a price, don't have a gender, a skin color, nothing. We are all on the same plate.

Anything I do, I do with my heart. This is why I sometimes get very upset or sometimes get very personal when I'm working.

One thing my mom didn't want any of us to do was to cry or to complain about life. Every day and night, even when we didn't have much food, we would pray together. And that for me was a beautiful moment. The fact of being poor didn't really hurt me.