It's for all the women who embrace my aesthetic, but can't afford a Vera Wang dress. If women can get anything out of it - a little bit of me or a lot of me, that's what's important.

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.

Fashion to me has become very disposable; I wanted to get back to craft, to clothes that could last.

I started at the very highest level so the upper end is something I know very well. I know it instinctively. But all the years I was designing, it frustrated me that I could reach so few women.

It's kind of hard when your moniker is "bridal" and "evening" for people to understand that I don't run around in a bridal gown all day, nor do I run around in an evening gown. I run around in clothes that resonate for me. I wanted to do those clothes in my ready-to-wear collection - because I don't know how you can be a woman designing for other women and not relate it back to yourself.

Ready-to-wear is what I've wanted to do since the beginning. ... I'm not a girl who spends my life in a ballgown

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