I am interested in beauty when it has something special and mysterious.

My relationship with religion is very strong because it was my hope, and it gave me two things very important in my life. It gave me the belief and it gave me a point to reach: Don't do something bad to the people next to you.

If you buy a Cartier ring you want people to know it is a Cartier ring or a diamond, or a piece of art that's giving an emotion - then people read it and say, "wow that's really amazing". With prêt-à-porter you see people in the street, in a club, in a restaurant or whatever, and you think, "Oh my god, he's wearing my trousers!" In a way it's more open - people can put together the way they want - mixed with other designers.

At the beginning, I didn't see what Givenchy could give my career. It was like, "Okay, I'll do it for the money for a few years to help my mom and my sisters."

This is why I decided to work with Nike, too, because it is even more mass-market than Givenchy and could make entry-price shoes and make people dream to be part of the journey.

When I started, everyone said couture was finished and I was so scared. Actually I was more terrorized than scared. I was arriving from a provincial area of Italy. They called me in to do Givenchy and I just thought, Wow.

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