When I am designing, I keep in mind more the American woman than the French woman.
As a student, I was more gifted in history and geography. Things like arithmetic were not my strength.
It gives you a good feeling. Each year, you rediscover in a garden the magic of life. A flower arrives, and it is a miracle. The leaves fall in the autumn, and it looks fantastic. There is a tenderness about a garden, and you can't help but be sensitive to that.
I don't think I am avant-garde. I made a lot of creations and created harmony with my fabrics, but I was not like Balenciaga, for example, although he was, of course, a great inspiration.
I think all beautiful women have a clean look. They like things that are simple.
Balenciaga taught me everything I know. He taught me to care for the details, that it was not necessary to sew on a button where it had no use or to add a flower to make a dress beautiful... no unnecessary detail.
My mother was a beautiful lady, elegant, chic, and that was the biggest inspiration to me.
My grandmother had a cupboard where she kept her collections and textile samples of all sorts of things. When I had good grades, I could take out one piece of work to look at.
I had the fortune to evolve at a time when fashion was very important, and women dressed themselves very well. A woman who dressed very well also had a husband who would have beautiful collections of art and decorative objects.
Of course everyone dreams of living in the 17th or the 18th century because of the costumes, but there were so many incommodities.
Like in great painting and architecture, in couture, to make clothes you must eliminate, eliminate, eliminate to obtain the true sense of a line. You see, the more you add, the more you load on, the more it's mad. You must try to have just the silhouette, which is an intelligence in clothes.
To be a couture designer is not only to create dresses but to adapt your line to your private customers. It is why couture is expensive. You are like a doctor.
You work around a body and adapt the clothes to your own customer, and this is the interesting part. This is why the haute couture exists: because in ready-to-wear, you have not too much fitting.
In the early '50s, it was still the time of Christian Dior's New Look. Every dress was big and important, and I thought I must do something completely different. Women needed something for daytime that was wearable.
Mine is one of the most beautiful professions in fashion: making others happy with an idea... I am happy because I did the job I dreamt of as a child.
If fashion is good, it has no epoch.
If you want to express yourself, it is difficult to be by yourself. You must have people around you who understand the same music. It is like being the chef d'orchestra. They need you, but you need them desperately.
Clients become very attached to the fitter who they feel understands them.
I haven't really got a green thumb, but I love gardens and their architecture.
Each of my garments is something special in itself. You give all your energy to each piece, to each creation, and I have no favourite. I love all of them equally.
