I love MTV, and I love the VMAs. There's no award show like it. It really is the coolest award show, hands down.

I'm a populist. I'm the people's designer... It's important that there are price points that allow people in who maybe don't have the ability to have higher-ticket items - but they can still have something very emblematic of the collection.

I think about my friends all the time when I'm designing. That's always an arbiter. Would Katy wear this? Would Rihanna wear this? Would Sia wear it? Would Miley wear it?

Being pure in my voice has always served me the best. Anytime I've tried to hide my light under a bushel, it's never done me any good.

There have been a lot of challenges, but I'm still standing on my own, and it's quite an achievement knowing that I own my own business and created my own success through hard work and vision.

Even as exuberant as my style is and as over the top as I may be, I can appreciate a classic when it's really well done.

I feel my role is to push boundaries. I don't like things to be safe and sedentary. So controversy is the cross I have to bear.

It was here in L.A., before 'I Kissed a Girl' and all that. She stopped me and told me she was a huge fan and that she was a singer and that one day she hoped that I would dress her. I ended up dressing her for her record release.

An Isaac Mizrahi fashion-show ticket signed by Steven Meisel. I rushed up to Meisel at the end of the show and asked him to autograph the card that had his name and seating assignment on it. It was an incredible moment when he shot the autumn/winter 2014 Moschino campaign.

I don't think the distinction between high and low culture exists anymore.

One thing I have that the majority of other designers don't is humor. That's distinctly my approach, and it was distinctly Franco Moschino's, too.

I like the mix of something farmlike and something futuristic and artsy mixed together. It's kind of both my worlds.

I think Barbie and I are very similar in many respects. That's why she made such a great muse for the summer Moschino collection.

I really don't see little girls growing up and thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to morph myself so I look like Barbie.'

McDonald's, Barbie - they're all icons, recognizable from London to Timbuktu.

I don't make clothes for the critics.

Suddenly, Dallas has become a big part of my life, and now I feel like I'm part of the fabric of the community here.

There's a lot of fashion that I don't respond to and I just walk on. I always look for things that make me happy, and in my work, all I'm doing is trying to convey that joy. Fashion should always be fun.

You don't have to be born wealthy and have an aristocratic last name or have connections or all these things. If you have a dream, you can believe in something and work hard and struggle and fight for it and still have a chance to succeed.

I've been thinking a lot about how we worship celebrity and how we have Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and Jesus all on the same playing field.

My story is the American Dream, a hundred percent.

My country is in the toilet. And when my country is in the toilet, the world is in the toilet.

If Michelle Obama had stepped out in an outrageously priced jacket by an Italian designer, heads would have rolled. People would have said it was deplorable.

'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.