Whoever's designing for plus-size doesn't get it. The entire garment needs to be reconceived. You can't just take a size 8 and make it larger.

With fashion, you really need to understand the aspects of construction. Not just design on an iPad.

But I will add, there's one thing I will not do, ever: I will never talk to you about things you cannot change. It plants a negativity in the head of a designer or the student, and it's a distraction.

But my manners also came from when I was in college and began participating in critiques. You have to speak with someone respectfully about their work and be honest and open, without hurting them.

Fashion was in a crisis up until the mid-'90s and, when it came out of the crisis, it was a very different place. It was a place that nurtured and cultivated young entrepreneurial designers.

I always say I have a Socratic approach to most things that I do. I pummel people with questions, because I need to know what they're thinking, what they're trying to achieve, what they believe the final outcome is going to be.

I found early on in teaching, if you're too blunt an instrument, the students discredit you and think you're just being mean. They're not interested in what you have to say.

I wouldn't know what to do on a date. I don't have the time. To make a relationship work, I'd have to give something up, and I'm not so sure I'm willing to do that.

I've never mentioned this, but when I was at Parsons teaching, the other design disciplines, they don't like fashion design. They see it as very nineteenth-century.

If you told me when I was a teen that I would end up being a teacher, I would have said you're out of your mind, because quite frankly I hated school.

If you want to write an angry e-mail, write it but don't send it. It's based on my experience that whenever I have acted out in some manner, I have always regretted it.

Part of what was in the ether all around me growing up, until I was between 19 and 20, was a terrible, debilitating stutter. It was part of what made me very reclusive as a kid.

There's nothing I like better than going to my apartment, closing the door, cooking my little dinner for one and just tuning out. My apartment really is my haven. It's a nest where I go to heal.

Take the high road. No matter how much strife, and consternation, frustration and anger you might be confronted with - don't go to that level.

Life is not a solo act. It's a huge collaboration, and we all need to assemble around us the people who care about us and support us in times of strife.

I have my flaws and my issues, past and present and who knows what will happen in the future. I want people to know I'm vulnerable too and each one of us is.

And Brooke Elliott is a great actress.

But if fashion were easy, wouldn't everybody look great?

But if I had to choose a single destination where I'd be held captive for the rest of my time in New York, I'd choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Does a man need to know what a peplum is? Probably not.