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I have become aware on my travels that when a country loses the connection between its history and its traditional dress, something truly precious is lost.

There's a certain lack of gimmickry to what I do that makes people in England go: 'Where's the thing?'

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me, it is like a mythical place.

The fact is that I loved being in England.

The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.

Tradition is the illusion of permanance.

As a little girl living in the English countryside, I used to go running around in the forests, creating my own fairy tale.

Throughout history, it took centuries for the habits of one culture to materially affect another. Now, that which becomes popular in one country can sweep through others within months.

If I have smashed the traditions, it was because I knew no traditions.