When brides ask me, "What's the best advice you can give me on my wedding day?" I always have the same answer: "Be yourself." Someone's marrying you, they love you for who you are, and they don't want you to be someone else.

Service is a prerequisite for anything relating to luxury. That makes it (shopping) sensual and pleasurable.

My closet is organized by tops, pants, and outerwear, but not a lot of dresses. Gowns are in another room because I don't often dress formally, even though I design gowns. Like most designers, I have a uniform, and mine is a legging.

Every woman hates her own body. I don't know a woman who doesn't . . . well, I do know a few who love themselves but in the case of most women it's like, "ugh." And when I dress a woman, my design intention is to give them an attitude or a grace, no matter whether it's a wedding gown or ready-to-wear.

Don't be afraid to take time to learn. It's good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn.

I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style.

Certainly a big challenge for me with evening-wear is to make it look modern and artistic and avant-garde. The very concept of a ball gown is not in itself a modern concept, and women need to wear that for a certain presence in Hollywood. I'm also aware that a starlet might go to more than one place that night so the piece could also offer, maybe not a revolution, but an evolution.