Very skinny women don't look beautiful in clothes.

We all look for lost time.

You need ego but mine is not blinding.

Going out in Paris was like going out in the '30s dressed like the Andrews Sisters. It was everything I'd seen in books at my grandparents' house, only it was our generation.

If you look back at the history of creativity in clothes - the French Revolution, the First World War and the Second World War - they have all been creative reinventions, the moment new forms of luxury come into play.

Fashion needs to be worn.

They say that the best furniture and clothing design from the '50s and '60s is Scandinavian or Milanese.

I look for friends who make me laugh.

I translated Beatles songs for my English class.

I'd experienced the '40s and '50s by looking at my grandparents' old clothes, books, and magazines.

Italy is a divided country without a center.

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.

The exchange by e-mail is more intimate than conversation - you allow yourself to say things you otherwise wouldn't.

People want to be in their own fashion tribes, so they want to wear the same clothes to be connected to everyone else in that tribe. But they want to be different from other tribes.

But the Milanese have made bad choices, bad fashion, and bad jewelry.

For me, I am still very happy to be able to do stage design as it's an opportunity to express the extreme.

French design hardly exists, except as artificial modernism.

I am always anxious to know what has happened while I've been asleep.

I am not nostalgic for the past.

I am still in love with couture because it is just two months from drawing pad to runway so everything on the catwalk is hot from the oven.