Shoes? I have loved them all: '60s pumps; white Courreges ankle boots; platform soles from the first time around, in the '70s; more boots - ankle, calf, and knee-high; 1980s sneakers; pin heels and wedges; Mary Janes and stilettos.
As the fashion carousel spins ever faster, the concern is that, while the stream of newness never runs out, there's going to be a good deal more crash and burn among designers in the future.
The clothes most worn by people are the clothes least commented on by the press.
I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immortality that a lot of designers long for. You know, those endless exhibitions.
When I look at my clothes, I think of them as an expression of the joy and fun of fashion - with a bit of English eccentricity thrown in.
Minimalism? It is something I appreciate as an art form but leave to others - unless you count a collection of warhorse-workwear Yves Saint Laurent trouser suits. Maybe my penchant for hippie-deluxe eccentricity came from an escapist dream of a different world. It was tough being a working mom in the 1970s.
I was taken to my first fashion show - Nina Ricci haute couture - in Paris by the White Russian princess, down on her luck, whom I was boarding with in Paris in 1963. I was captivated by the glamour of the gilded salon, the elegant clothes, and the audience of grand ladies.
Nan Kempner wore one of the first Saint Laurent trouser suits to one of those fancy Madison Avenue restaurants and was denied access. She famously took off her pants and walked in wearing only the jacket. And it was that kind of revolution that was echoed in fashion and in life.
Fledgling designers need investment - but how much easier it is to put them in a dead man or woman's shoes, perhaps also backing the new designer's namesake line, but only as what the French call a 'danseuse,' a plaything.
I am not really sure that Diana Vreeland did Yves Saint Laurent a favor, as opposed to the world, by putting that exhibition at the Met in 1983. Because I'm sure that Saint Laurent started looking back at his own work. You see that with artists, don't you? Once they get their first retrospective, it's really hard for them to push ahead.
The clothes that fire up my emotions are colorful and 'different' pieces. My eye still picks out gilded-cloque glamour from among Burberry's streamlined trench coats or a hand-printed coat from Dries Van Noten.
