It's hard to juggle being a businessperson with being a creative person. You have to organize yourself - PR needs me for PR, and the licensing division needs me for licensing, the bridal people need me for bridal.

Bridal is always about who you are as a person and as a woman and as a lover and as a mate. People always ask me how a woman can pick just one dress. And the funny thing is they always know.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.

We got a lot of letters of people who didn't like them, like my own family who thought they were unnecessary and unpleasant and taking advantage of women in a sad situation - I never saw that. And I think that sometimes, you have to take a risk.

In terms of bridal dress, I've tried everything. I've tried short, long, deconstructed, constructed, bustiers, working in fabrics, working in color. I've been working in color in bridal for probably 15 years. Who else would do an entire collection dipped in tea? I did that one year. My design team dipped every single dress in tea in a bathtub. I did that just because I wanted to work out of the vocabulary of white.

There was no relationship between a wedding dress and fashion. There was no good taste, either. I realized that I could make an impression in terms of changing and readdressing the whole industry of bridal.

It's hard to balance everything. It's always challenging.