Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way.
My bedroom is my sanctuary. It's like a refuge, and it's where I do a fair amount of designing - at least conceptually, if not literally.
My evening really begins when I take a long, hot bath. I light a candle, and I turn on the news and try to catch up. It's when I can breathe from the day to the night, and that means a lot to me.
A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes.
The key is falling in love with something, anything. If your heart's attached to it, then your mind will be attached to it.
To me, eyewear goes way beyond being a prescription. It's like makeup. It's the most incredible accessory. The shape of a frame or the color of lenses can change your whole appearance.
When you have a passion for something then you tend not only to be better at it, but you work harder at it too.
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. People get very trapped where they are.
Things that came before, people and things and experiences - that does mean something to me. It doesn't mean I don't embrace the new, but I don't forget the past, either.
Don't be afraid to take time to learn. It's good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn.
It's hard to balance everything. It's always challenging.
All I did my first year at Vogue was Xerox.
I see myself as a true modernist. Even when I do a traditional gown, I give it a modern twist. I go to the past for research. I need to know what came before so I can break the rules.
My normal routine is pretty much putting out fires all day.
When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great.
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.
I've been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too - what I should wear.
New York for me is about work. If L.A. were to become a West Coast version of that, I'd shoot myself. The climate, the lifestyle - it really fits as the yin to my New York yang.
I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.
I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style.
