'What if this funny-looking youngster from Missouri is talented after all?' I think it was a nice place to grow up, but I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

Designers have a reputation for setting the tone for what people - and especially women - are supposed to wear. How long their skirts should be, things like that. I have a different philosophy: put something out there with humour; let people see that and come around to it on their own.

I'm not anti-intellectual, but primarily, I try to feel things. Emotions aren't always rational; it's not possible to put them into words.

I've met people with my prints tattooed on them, my face tattooed on them - I have that commitment and love.

I get love from fans in a big enough dosage that it acts as a shield, and I would not sacrifice that love in order to please the industry.

When I design, I always pull from things that are significant to me. In my work, I search for happiness and then try to convey that joy in the clothes.

I know that my image and my clothing and my output are very colorful and can be arresting and startling in some respects. That is the nature of my work, but I am a simple farm boy, and I am very calm by nature.

I have lots of muses, but one of my main girls is Cara Delevingne. She epitomises the way to wear my clothes. I love how she mixes up her style and the way she has so much fun. I simply adore her.

Music and fashion combined make such a lethal weapon in my opinion.

I'm never going to be inspired by some obscure film, which isn't to say I don't enjoy that sort of thing. I just want to share my work with everyone.

I like to think of my work and the way people approach it in the same way people approach a Lichtenstein painting. You can write a one-hundred-page dissertation about why he used comics. Or it could be like, 'This is cute!'

I was born dirt-poor with barely a stitch on my back, and no name or prestige attached to me, and no real clout or connections.

With the clothes I design, I think about my friends, how I'd want them to dress, what I'd want them to wear.

I want my clothes to have a life and then end up in a secondhand store, where some cool girl discovers them 20 years later. If the runway or red carpet is the only life clothes have, it's sad.

I look at myself like a farmer, harvesting my wares and taking them to the market, and then I go back and do it again.

Fashion is an ultimate luxury - I mean, you don't need it - so it should bring you pleasure and make you happy. I don't like the idea of people revering it.

I don't do many social events in the fashion industry. Instead, I go to things like the MTV awards because that's where I fit in - wearing a yellow tuxedo and no shirt on a red carpet.

I'd be a pop star. Although, I was once sat front row at a Rihanna concert when she came down to the audience and sat on my lap, pointed the microphone towards my mouth, and I couldn't sing a line.

Night in. I'm really kind of a homebody.

I follow my inspiration to wherever it goes. I do want the fans to feel the fun and excitement about it, and I like for people to be able to make their own interpretations about my work.

Madonna is the ultimate pop star of all time, hands down. She wrote the playbook for it. There is no female pop star - and probably few men today, for that matter - who are not indebted to her in one way or another for her contributions to the industry.

I'm fully aware, fully on, and fully kind of designing everything that goes on with me. Anything that's happening is definitely on my table.

I started at Moschino Oct. 31 or Nov. 1, 2013, and now I go back and forth between Milan and Los Angeles, where I live.

I went to Paris to learn and absorb some of the amazing ambience I was enamored with growing up in Kansas City. I didn't go there to start my own collection. But I never could get an internship, so finally, I was left with just doing my own show.

I've always felt like an outsider, and I'll probably continue to always feel like an outsider. Hopefully that's a good thing. I feel like I approach things differently than other designers.

The main thing I hope people see is how passionate I am about my work, and I know people talk about it, but I do work really hard on my stuff, and it means a lot to me.

I grew up on a farm and didn't have connections, and I had a dream that I believed in, and I felt passionate about it, so if I can instill hope into somebody too with the film, that's what I most want.

When Jackie Kennedy wanted to wear her favourite European designers, she was told no. She had to start working with brands like Adolfo, who had to create Chanel knock-offs because that's what she wanted to wear.

Melania rarely wears American labels, with the exception of Ralph Lauren, who created a duplication of a Jackie Kennedy look, which was basically a costume anyway.

Sometimes people have questioned whether I was making fun of the industry or just at myself. I'm just trying to raise a smile. Clothes aren't meant to be worshipped at a church altar.

We have to fight for everything we believe in.

I think when people think of something as basic, they think that it's boring.

I love the low-rider cars and that whole culture.

I feel like we have to fight for art.

By the nature of fashion, you're only as good as your last collection, so I'm constantly striving to be better, so I don't look at it as if I've made it.

I feel very blessed to have the support I have and to have the fans that I have. I'm still striving to make it every day.

I always grew up watching things transform, and a lot of that was what we would call trash.

I feel very blessed to have such wonderful cheerleaders and champions of my work.

I don't really dissect too much when ideas come - they just kind of pop into my head; I just take them and run.

I love all these things where proportions have been changed and altered.