I like when a man has one strong accessory. If it's a watch, it has to be major. If you have strong shoes, it should just be the shoes. I don't like when a man is overdone-that's just bad taste. Coco Chanel was always saying you have to watch yourself in the mirror, put on a lot of things, and then take them off. I think it should be that way for men as well.

Every two to three weeks, I was changing around my room. My room was made out of nothing, basically - a magazine, a little radio, a little bed - and I had the sensibility to put things together and match things in a certain way so that they were very special.

I do the final fitting because the client wants me there. They're not spoilt, they really understand that you're very busy, but they just want you to say what you think - for just ten minutes. They really want to know your opinion because it really is a service at the end of the day, a luxury service.

My luck has always been how I've had a family of women around me, and I have women who are very close to me - for example, Mariacarla Boscono, Carine Roitfeld, Marina Abramovic. I have different women whom I adore and value.

My mom and my sisters were amazing; they always see the good in people. My mom, she doesn't know how to write and read much, but she's one of the most fantastic women I've met in my life.

Even though I had a fantastic family, I always felt lonely - not lonely in the melancholic way but knowing that, to really survive, I have to do everything for myself. I had to work and study, and I was out in the street really surviving, bringing food back home.

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.