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The dresses I wore are in the Smithsonian now.

I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. I think of people I want to dress when I design.

I wanted to be involved with fashion, though I didn't know what being a designer meant.

I've admired historical clothes like Victorian gowns since I was a child, and it's what motivated me to go into fashion.

I wanted to be a fashion designer.

I graduated from Academy of Fashion and Costume Design in Rome. At first, I thought I was going to be a costume designer for films, and then I ended up working in fashion - not as a designer, but mostly as a model.

I wish I was more into clothes. I don't know the current designers.

I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.

Even before I was discovered in 1966, I used to make my own clothes. I learned how to sew early on, and it's still my passion now. I constantly have ideas in my head about clothes so jumped at the chance to do my own collection and am very hands-on. Everything I design, I wear and I love.