I want to give haute couture a kind of wink, a sense of humour - to introduce the whole sense of freedom one sees in the street into high fashion; to give couture the same provocative and arrogant look as punk - but, of course, with luxury and dignity and style.

I am very happy to design haute couture. It's a love story between couture and me.

We're in the business of selling pleasure. We don't sell handbags or haute couture. We sell dreams.

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.