For me, darkness is something very beautiful.

I believe that couture is not about shocking.

I love art and music more than I love fashion, to be honest.

Being a creative mind, you have to examine who you are every day.

I tried to never exclude people. I know what it means to be left out.

I am interested in beauty when it has something special and mysterious.

I can give a beautiful present, and that may change the lives of people around me.

My definition of beauty is something between extremely ugly and extremely fantastic.

My truth is this: That I don't know what will happen tomorrow because you can never know.

Seduction is about intelligence and wit. Someone who makes me laugh has every chance to seduce me.

My life has changed financially and I have a name, but I try to never forget people on my journey.

I’m very faithful to myself. When you do things that are true it just comes out quite instinctively.

For me, fashion is a job. I love it. It's my passion. But the most important thing for me in general is life.

We are Italian. We are all little tribes - not only in fashion, but also in music - in everything, basically.

Religion and love don't have a price, don't have a gender, a skin color, nothing. We are all on the same plate.

Black is always elegant. It is the most complete colour in the whole world, made of all the colours in the palette.

The aborigines in Australia, the way they dress is very honest; it's not about: "Oh, you wear a skirt, you're gay."

I've got what I want, and I've got the luck to express myself and to be paid and to do what I do as a creative person.

I had only two girlfriends. I didn't have many friends because I was staying at home and dreaming - drawing and dreaming.

Anything I do, I do with my heart. This is why I sometimes get very upset or sometimes get very personal when I'm working.

I didn't know I was going to become a designer; I was going to become a successful person, but I really wanted to be free.

People's wardrobes in history are something that society and culture imposed. But sexuality is not about the way you dress.

In prêt-à-porter now we understandably need to make the collection satisfy the big market more, so couture is extra special.

I always think about the streets because that's where I come from and that's where I'm going to die one day. That is my life.

No matter how much people in fashion think we're so cool and avant-garde, for most fashion people, creativity is quite taboo.

I come from a very poor family, with sisters. I never really knew my father, so I miss this strong image of a man in my life.

When I was far away, when I prayed every night, I felt I was very near with my heart, with my brain, to my sisters and my mom.

I try to destroy taboo in fashion-which is something I learned as a kid. I come from the street, and you have to be a survivor.

These five years as a couturier have really changed my way of seeing fashion and my confidence with fashion. Couture is a dream.

I am close friends with Marina Abamovich, so I love strong, very aggressive political art. She is like a mom who wants to adopt me.

In the beginning I didn't want to do a menswear collection. It felt a little forced. And then I found that it was an amazing world.

I'm very well off but I can stay with normal people. I can do a super-luxury life, but I can do a very normal life and I'm not scared.

I think my heart is in a very good place. And I think this is why I'm achieving what I've been asking to do in the universe for so long.

I brought a lot of the codification of womenswear to menswear. Why? Because when I was a child, I was wearing women's clothes adjusted to me.

The elegance of the Italian South is a very strong elegance and it is one that I bring. It is a sexy elegance - or at least, let's say less chaste.

I used to hate to go to school, because when it was Friday afternoon and everybody was finished school, I knew I was going to work Saturday and Sunday.

Couture is emotion. Couture is freedom. Couture is not thinking about pricing and not thinking about craziness. You can do whatever you want to do in couture.

At the beginning, I didn't see what Givenchy could give my career. It was like, "Okay, I'll do it for the money for a few years to help my mom and my sisters."

The couture client wants the latest things, but she wants the clothes to be super-special - the fabrics won't even touch or go near anything like prêt-à-porter.

I think that's what you and I have in common, Donatella Versace, that careful balance. It makes me proud to be an Italian. In the end, I am proud to do what I do.

My friends were like, "Oh, this weekend, we're going to go shopping." "Oh, this weekend I'm going to go to see the judo champion" ... you know. And I couldn't do anything.

In spite of the fact that everyone thinks I am very much a rottweiler - that i am very dark and everything - I have a side that is very romantic that i show to very few people.

This is why I decided to work with Nike, too, because it is even more mass-market than Givenchy and could make entry-price shoes and make people dream to be part of the journey.

When I was 12, I used to dress as a woman in the house. At the time, cross-dressing was a big taboo in Italy. It was better to have a son who was a drug addict than a cross-dresser.

I love finding new things. I love the conceptual aspect of Antony Hegarty or the voices of those back in the day like Lil' Kim, Missy Elliott, Ciara. I love what evokes emotion in me.

I've always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human - like mermaids and Minotaurs - because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life.

Most little children's obsessions are robots and Barbie dolls. My obsession as a kid was the Versace house. I used to save up my pocket money to buy Versus shirts. I was that obsessed!

Couture is more your own world, they come and buy head-to-toe ­ - they buy the jewelry, bags, coats, dresses, bodies underneath.... But couture is not dead ­ - it's taken another shape.

When I started at 9, I was working with plaster. I worked with a florist. It was a little illegal for kids to work. They would give you tips because they couldn't really give you wages.

My mom and my sisters were amazing; they always see the good in people. My mom, she doesn't know how to write and read much, but she's one of the most fantastic women I've met in my life.

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