Design and style should work toward making you look good and feel good without a lot of effort so you can get on with the things that matter. We look our best in subdued colors, sophisticated cuts, and a general air of sleek understatement. War taught me that not everything is glamorous. Nostalgia is a very complicated subject for me. I’m attracted by nostalgia but I refuse it intellectually. My customers are successful workingwomen.
That is the key of this collection, being yourself. Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live. You have to be luxurious nude. It’s difficult to move in the nude in front of a mirror. It’s much easier to move when you’re dressed. But if you can walk around in the nude easily in front of your man, if you can be luxurious in the nude, then you’ve really got it. The key to my collections is sensuality. I’m a fashion designer and people think, what do I know? I never like to think that I design for a particular person. I design for the woman I wanted to be, the woman I used to be, and – to some degree – the woman I’m still a little piece of.
Fashion to me has become very disposable; I wanted to get back to craft, to clothes that could last. I am what I am. Before I was not so proud to make fashion. My family thought fashion wasn’t very interesting. So I hid that. Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it. If you cut a painter’s hands off, he’d still feel the urge to pick up a brush. I believe that my clothes can give people a better image of themselves – that it can increase their feelings of confidence and happiness.