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 never thought I'd be successful. It seems in my own mind that in everything I've undertaken I've never quite made the mark. But I've always been able to put disappointments aside. Success isn't about the end result; it's about what you learn along the way.

All I did my first year at Vogue was Xerox.

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.

People get very trapped where they are. When they hear 'fashion' they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist.

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 used to get tons of letters that said, "I'll never get to wear you," or "I'll never get married in one of your dresses," or "I'll never have an evening gown like the one I saw on the red carpet." I thought that was sad, because you give your life to this and you end up reaching very few people. So that was a major goal for me - to be able to reach and encourage more women, to encourage them to express themselves and be what they want to be.