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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've been designing my own pieces for a long time. My mother's a jewelry designer, so we knew at some point we were going to do a line and dive into the fashion world.

I think I've revived the costume-jewelry industry.

I was a baby when I began, but I knew exactly what I wanted to wear myself. I became a jewelry designer because I knew how to do something with a pencil and sketch my ideas.

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.

I became a fashion designer to make clothes for the people, not to be a top couturier in the French tradition.

When I was a child, I lived in Morocco, and I would always buy a lot of beads from the markets and to make jewellery for friends. Later, at 18, I would do my own clothes and make my own patterns. When I first came to New York, people just assumed I was a stylist because I was so into fashion.

I've been working in sculpture and painting since 1920.

I was an art student at the time, like thousands of others.