If I'm sending emails, and I get all wound up and stressed and don't know what to do with myself for 20 minutes, I just go soak in hot water and lie there, thinking, 'What should I do?' So it's meditative.

I am a spiritual person in an eastern religion kind of way. I learned that happiness for all of us is a switch that you flick in your brain. It doesn't have anything to do with getting a new house, a new car, a new girlfriend, or a new pair of shoes. Our culture is very much about that; we are never happy with what we have today.

Part of fashion is newness. It's got to be a new combination of elements that's shocking-stunning-beautiful all at the same time. But it doesn't have any emotion.

To me, beauty and sadness are very closely linked. Truly beautiful things make me sad because I know they are going to fade. When I see a beautiful 20-year-old boy or girl-and they are breathtaking-I am filled with a kind of sadness. But maybe they are beautiful because we know they are not permanent and they are in a kind of transition.

I told myself that I would not come back to women's fashion until I felt I had something new to say. I feel that fashion has become too serious and that the actual customer's needs have not really been addressed. Fashion needs to make one happy. It is a luxury and should enhance one's quality of life.

I think there's nothing more painful for anyone than unrequited love. If you've ever had that kind of physical access to someone and then, all of a sudden, that is denied, and yet you're still in love with that person, it's very, very, very painful to be around that person in a certain way.

September 11th was a moment when America had the sympathy of the world.