It's the ultimate for me not to see how it's made. I find it vulgar when you can distinguish how something is made. I used to be a student at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris, and once I got to go to a Saint Laurent couture show. Everyone was always talking about how fabulous the tailoring was, but I was transfixed by this one particular dress. It was just a piece of fabric, but as the model was walking, you didn't know how she got into it, how it closed, where the seams were, and that, for me, was perfection. It stayed with me as a lifelong vision.

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.

I'm more European than anything. I've lived in America for 10 years, and I live in Florida because I like to be outdoors. I live a week in New York, and I live a week in Italy. When I'm here in Italy, I come to work at eight in the morning and usually I leave work at 10 o'clock at night. I don't even breathe the air. So that's why I like to live outside.

The It Bag is a totally marketed bullshit crap. You make a bag, you put all the components in it that you think could work, you send it out to a couple of celebrities, you get the paparazzi to shoot just when they walk out of their house. You sell that to the cheap tabloids, and you say in a magazine that there's a waiting list. And you run an ad campaign at the same time. I don't believe that's how you make something that's lasting - that becomes iconic as a design.

I'm working for a woman, not a lady. What I hate the most is that "lady" talk. You know, when I read a review, "The lady wears a Bottega Veneta. . . ." What lady? It's the same girls who are walking the runway an hour later elsewhere. But probably it is just the sophistication in our material, the nuance of the color, or the quality of the makeup or the hair that make people think that way. Most people just don't understand simplicity.

It's the moment when you're making the clothes - "Doesn't this need that?" That's how it comes. It's not from, like, thinking for hours. Most of the things happen when you are in the fitting. When you make clothes, the fitting is the decisive moment.

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.