I love hip-hop and R&B. People always say, "You are dark, you make dark dresses. You probably only love The Cure or Diamanda Galás." I love Diamanda Galás, but I also love Madonna, Beyoncé, and Courtney Love. They are all from different worlds, but they all evoke emotions in me. I am someone who needs emotions and needs to transmit them. If that weren't the case, I'd be better off changing professions.

I've always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human - like mermaids and Minotaurs - because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life.

For me, aesthetically, Donatella Versace represent what the Italian woman is. There is always the American rock thing, the aristocratic, above-the-rest British manner, but Italy is at the heart of it.

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.

My friends were like, "Oh, this weekend, we're going to go shopping." "Oh, this weekend I'm going to go to see the judo champion" ... you know. And I couldn't do anything.

I was the last one of nine kids - eight girls and me last - and my sisters were going out. They were teenagers. And as they were getting ready, I would sit on the bathtub and watch them put on makeup and transform themselves - you know, putting on clothes and giggling about the boys they were going to meet and everything. So for me, that was an amazing thing - the fact of transforming themselves.

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.