Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way.
Vera Wang
A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes.
My evening really begins when I take a long, hot bath. I light a candle, and I turn on the news and try to catch up. It's when I can breathe from the day to the night, and that means a lot to me.
My bedroom is my sanctuary. It's like a refuge, and it's where I do a fair amount of designing - at least conceptually, if not literally.
To me, eyewear goes way beyond being a prescription. It's like makeup. It's the most incredible accessory. The shape of a frame or the color of lenses can change your whole appearance.
The key is falling in love with something, anything. If your heart's attached to it, then your mind will be attached to it.
That was a major goal for me - to be able to reach and encourage more women, to encourage them to express themselves and be what they want to be. People get very trapped where they are.
Things that came before, people and things and experiences - that does mean something to me. It doesn't mean I don't embrace the new, but I don't forget the past, either.
I do speak Mandarin, and I also relate to the hunger that China has for culture and architecture and style.
As the mother of two daughters, I have great respect for women. And I don't ever want to lose that.
When you have a passion for something then you tend not only to be better at it, but you work harder at it too.
Don't be afraid to take time to learn. It's good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn.
I see myself as a true modernist. Even when I do a traditional gown, I give it a modern twist. I go to the past for research. I need to know what came before so I can break the rules.
My closet is organized by tops, pants, and outerwear, but not a lot of dresses. Gowns are in another room because I don't often dress formally, even though I design gowns. Like most designers, I have a uniform, and mine is a legging.
Design is about point of view, and there should be some sort of woman or lifestyle or attitude in one's head as a designer. So my being able to reach the masses was something that meant a great deal to me - especially for women who could never wear Vera Wang.
When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great.
I'm only waiting for Lindsay Lohan's fashion collection to come out. Ten years from now, there may be no real designers left.
I was a total fashion insider who became an outsider when I did bridal.
It's a remarkable exercise to sit and look at your own work over the years.
I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.
Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.
I'm not really a girl who likes to go out to lunch or cocktails or store openings.
New York for me is about work. If L.A. were to become a West Coast version of that, I'd shoot myself. The climate, the lifestyle - it really fits as the yin to my New York yang.
Fashion to me has become very disposable; I wanted to get back to craft, to clothes that could last.
People get very trapped where they are. When they hear 'fashion' they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist.
I've been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too - what I should wear.
All those years of skating and dancing have carried over. I can't design anything without thinking of how a woman's body will look and move when she's wearing it.
It's hard to balance everything. It's always challenging.
All I did my first year at Vogue was Xerox.
I hate phones. All businesses are personal businesses, and I always try my best to get back to people, but sometimes the barrage of calls is so enormous that if I just answered calls I would do nothing else.
I like the gritty parts of fashion, the design, the studio, the pictures.
I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes, where a woman's personality and sense of self are revealed. I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman.
My mother is the reason I'm in fashion. She worshiped it. Unfortunately, she infected me.
Design is about point of view, and there should be some sort of woman or lifestyle or attitude in one's head as a designer.
I do think I know more about clothes than any 500 designers, because there's nothing like wearing them. You buy them, you study them, and you start to understand how they're crafted.
I see myself as an arbiter of taste.
It's hard to juggle being a businessperson with being a creative person. You have to organize yourself - PR needs me for PR, and the licensing division needs me for licensing, the bridal people need me for bridal.
It is horrible to say, but I was stigmatized by being a bridal designer for a long time. I am amazed I have been able to move beyond it. I had really all but given up trying, but I did it because it was my lifelong dream.
They never ask the celebrities why they don't wear their own clothes on the red carpet.
Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.
Fashion offers no greater challenge than finding what works for night without looking like you are wearing a costume.
I love sportswear in my own weird way. Fashion is such a personal journey for me. I'm much more of a girl that's a T-shirt, legging, layering kind of thing, and outerwear.
I love to design things that people can actually buy. I'm staggered by what a boot costs today.
The funny thing is that I'm the girl who no one sees at the beach. Ask anyone who's traveled with me. Normally, I'm in so many layers, I look like Lawrence of Arabia!
Let's be realistic, how many people are buying a $2,000 skirt? I love to design things that people can actually buy. I'm staggered by what a boot costs today.
Brides today are increasingly sensitive to the tastes, feelings and finances of their attendants.
I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity.
My normal routine is pretty much putting out fires all day.
I was trying to manage school and training for the Olympics and ended up not doing well at either. That was a big lesson in my life. My mother expected both.
I love a black wedding dress.
