I think that the older you get, the more you become your true, essential self. You find the things that make you happy. You whittle away the parts of yourself that mean less to you.

I do struggle because I’m attracted to beautiful things, yet at the same time I am actually very aware, in some sense, their lack of value and that the most important things in life are your connections to other people.

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.

Second-guess [myself]? Yes, I do. I question everything I do every step of the way. Once I make the decision I'm almost blinded by believing in it, and then I usually hate everything I've done.

If you are a designer, sometimes it is better not to delegate, because someone pays money for something that you designed, so it should be exactly the way you want it, exactly the way you would have chosen it. People call me a control freak, and I say, "Well, my name is on the shoe." It means the heel needs to be the way I want it and not the way somebody else wants it, and the toe needs to be exactly the way I want it, and the fabric and the material have to be exactly the way I want it. It is not a democracy - it is a dictatorship.

I enjoy the speed of fashion. I love doing different things and I think I still have something valid to say in fashion.

But as an adult working in the fashion industry, I struggle with materialism. And I'm one of the least materialistic people that exist, because material possessions don't mean much to me. They're beautiful, I enjoy them, they can enhance your life to a certain degree, but they're ultimately not important.