I think every collection is always a move forward. It's the same work - the process is always the same. The interesting thing is to try to achieve a certain nothingness.

The Maier woman is not a woman who doesn't have fun. My woman is not a woman who doesn't have a life. I like clothes to suggest something. I'm gay, but so what? I still have that sensibility that I like to look at a beautiful woman, and I'm as intrigued as any straight man. I probably look even harder because I like what you don't see.

I'm making bags that don't even have a seam. But many people don't get that. They run through the showroom and go, "He did yellow bags this season." That's fine. Not everything needs to be visible to everyone. But personally, that's what makes my work interesting to me. The whole fashion thing is not that interesting to me. The overall circus is not my universe.

I've been in clothes-making for 32 years. Think how many times I've made a blazer in my life, how many shirts I've made. What's interesting is to strive for a certain perfection, and what's perfect is nothing.

There's another little vision in my life, going into a restaurant in New York years ago: All the women are sitting in their little strapless dresses with their cleavage, and there's this one woman in a sleeveless turtleneck and pants. And I can tell you that every man in that restaurant looked at that woman's arms. It was hypnotizing when everything was covered up. Just the face, the conversation - and you see the arms. And the arms and the hands become an obsession. I like that.

Where I grew up, we spent a lot of time outside. I moved to Paris when I was 19, and from then on, it was exactly the opposite. On the weekend, you go to the galleries, the museums, the movies. And I thought, "I'm not going to be like all of these friends I've had who are now at this certain stage in their lives, and they are all unhappy with themselves because they never get out in the fresh air or the sun, and they get so disconnected from their bodies that they have to just layer and layer and layer like onions. I am not getting old like that."

Nothing is impossible. Whatever idea comes up, we always try to make it. Sometimes it doesn't work because it's just not technically achievable. But you can always make things better, more contemporary with the construction, the inside, the weight, and all of that.