I'm very budget-minded myself, and it serves me well.

So perhaps the real secret to style is filling yourself to the absolute brim with engagement. Loving not wisely, but too well and all that.

I've never mentioned this, but when I was at Parsons teaching, the other design disciplines, they don't like fashion design. They see it as very nineteenth-century.

What's important to a fashion designer? It's much more than learning how to make clothes. In fact, that merely makes you a dressmaker. It doesn't make you into a fashion designer.

Frankly, from my perspective, the bomber jacket is such a classic item you can wear it even when it's not on trend.

I believe in the semiotics of clothes. They send a message about how the world perceives us. For me it goes beyond clothes, it's grooming. It's accessories. It's the whole head to toe look.

I learned early on in teaching how easy it is to hurt a young person and that's never my intention.