Quote

While at Parsons, I interned at Marc Jacobs, which was great. When I graduated, I went to work at J. Crew; that was also really great.

So, after school, I needed to learn a trade and started to work as a tailor.

I got to train with some of the best and have critics like Oscar de la Renta and Calvin Klein. As a student under Calvin Klein, my project was to make a coat, and then years later, I was hired at Calvin, by Calvin, to design coats for him. It came full circle!

In designing a lifestyle brand, you have to know more than just designing clothes.

My parents had a factory, so I was linked to the textile and fashion industry.

I'd done my time in corporate America, from McDonald's making shakes to Morgan Stanley making deals and, yet, I felt awfully constrained by the uniform - not just my clothes, but how I felt I needed to conform - that a traditional job required me to wear.

Marc Jacobs is full of creative people and Louis Vuitton is again a name on the door, a name that has existed for many years but I'm a collaborator there and I bring in other people, other artists and I work with a great creative design team.

I wore the Marc Jacobs dress, so I love Marc Jacobs. He has a vintage flair. But I've always worn a lot of vintage stuff, so it hasn't been a lot of designers. If I see something that I like, I just buy it.

After university, I was working as a stylist in the Paris theatres when I had a flash of inspiration. I made necklaces from the bikinis designed for the cabaret performers of Folies Bergeres. I was so happy with them that it was only then that I sought out formal training in jewelry.