Confidence. If you have it, you can make anything look good. I'd like to believe that the women who wear my clothes are not dressing for other people, that they're wearing what they like and what suits them. It's not a status thing. 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. Design is a series of creative choices - it's a collaborative effort, an evolutionary process. You choose your fabrics depending upon what you want to say, then you work with mills to get those fabrics. Through the process, you realize what you want it to be. Fashion is to please your eye. Shapes and proportions are for your intellect.

The important thing is to take your time and not get stressed. I've treated the waistcoat as if it were a corset, so that it becomes the first layer in the process of putting clothes on the body. There is constant motion between layering and revealing. You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes. It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic, by fashion. Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.