It's important to view fashion as personal and creative - even for brides. 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, they want you to be who you are. If you never wear blue eye shadow, why would you put it on on your wedding day? If you wear your hair simply, why would you suddenly dye it a different color and get a big 'do? To me it's about respect and self-understanding and honesty.

It's a remarkable exercise to sit and look at your own work over the years.

When you have a passion for something then you tend not only to be better at it, but you work harder at it too.

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.

People get very trapped where they are. When they hear "fashion" they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist. If you can bring your own concept or your viewpoint and translate it not down but out, then you're really successful in the truest sense.

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.

I see myself as a true modernist. Even when I do a traditional gown, I give it a modern twist. I go to the past for research. I need to know what came before so I can break the rules.