There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!

My best friend is me, and I take good care of me.

Confidence. If you have it, you can make anything look good.

I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman.

When you get into a hotel room, you lock the door, and you know there is a secrecy, there is a luxury, there is fantasy. There is comfort. There is reassurance.

Insecurity is a waste of time.

Beauty is perfect in its imperfections, so you just have to go with the imperfections.

When you come to a hotel room, you want it to be grand, functional and beautiful. But you don't want things that are not useful. Sometimes you go to hotels and there are all these frames and pictures of people you don't know, and you end up hiding everything in the drawer, and then housekeeping come and put it out again.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become.

The important thing is to take your time and not get stressed.

Just don't go to a place where everything is too expensive... it'll put your husband in a bad mood.

When I was young, I lived like an old woman, and when I got old, I had to live like a young person.

Italy will always have the best food.

The older I get, the more impressed I am with women. I have yet to meet a woman who is not strong. They don't exist.

I think all races are represented in America much more than in many other places, but it's also nice to remind people about that ethnic mix. I would like to see more black models and women from different ethnic backgrounds, but I also think that when you are casting, you just choose the most beautiful girl you can find.

I get ideas about what's essential when packing my suitcase.

My son loves the Hotel du Cap, in the south of France.

Animals come from nature. They were not designed. All my inspiration comes from nature, whether it's an animal or the layout of bark or of a leaf. Sometimes my patterns are very bold, and you can barely see where they come from, but all the textures and all the prints come out of nature.

Do I believe in reincarnation? Well, let's say that I believe in karma. I think you make your own karma.

Go to a place where you're not going to be stressed, because a honeymoon itself can be a stressful thing.

Marriage was never a destination with me.

I've always liked wrinkles. When I was a young girl, I used to make lines on my face with my nails because I loved Jeanne Moreau. I always wanted to be older; I always added years to my life. For the longest time, if people thought I was older, I would take it as a compliment.

I never knew what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.

I used to be very insecure about my curly hair, because I lived in a country where everybody had blonde straight hair.

My biggest vice is playing solitaire on my iPad. It's bad. I mean, it's ridiculous.

Ireland is also quite nice. So is Amsterdam.

Eighteen months before I was born, my mother was in Auschwitz. She weighed 49 pounds. She always told me that God saved her so she could give me life. I was born out of nothing.

I was born in Belgium. I went to school in England and in Switzerland, then I came to America, so I really feel like I am a citizen of the world.

The real story is that I am very free, that I've managed to be who I wanted to be without compromising.

Usually, the fairy tale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over.

Harbour Island in the Bahamas is beautiful, with turquoise water and pink sand.

All women are the same, really: They are strong, but they are afraid of their own strength.

I'm not tired of who I am. That would be sad!

If you like trekking, go to the Himalayas or Peru. I love those kinds of trips. But it all depends on your own life and what you like and what you expect.

I design for the woman who loves being a woman.

I never like to think that I design for a particular person. I design for the woman I wanted to be, the woman I used to be, and - to some degree - the woman I'm still a little piece of.

I had good legs, and I loved showing them off.

I am a traveler. I am a nomad. I rarely sleep in the same bed more than three or four nights. And I know hotel life better than anyone.

If you're a good person, the goodness will continue through your descendants.

All I can tell you is that I've never met a woman who is not strong, but sometimes they don't let it out. Then there's a tragedy, and then all of a sudden that strength comes. My message is let the strength come out before the tragedy.

The way I design generally is very much travel-oriented because that is my life. That's why I make clothes that are so light and so easy to pack and a little bit seasonless.

What I think I sell with my clothes is confidence, so hopefully all my dresses, my accessories, are friends to the women. When you open the closet, and your eyes are swollen, and you don't like the way you look, you go to your friends.

I had arranged a birthday party for him and my children, who are all Aquarians. Instead, we got married. I ran out of excuses. It was just us and my children.

I wanted to be an empowered woman, and I became an empowered woman. And now I want to empower every woman. And I do it through my clothes, I do it through my words, I do it through my money, I do it through everything.

Work and children I could have. But the husband was just too much.

I am not allowed to be afraid. My mother made me like that. As a child, if I was afraid of the dark, she would lock me in the closet. Things like this. And she would talk about the time she spent in the concentration camp, but not about being afraid, only about the good side of it.

A challenging economy is always good for design. It unites necessity and functionality. You are forced to be creative with poor materials.

I was terrified the first time that I had a big problem in my business. I was obviously terrified when they diagnosed me with cancer in 1994. I was terrified when my son used to drive too fast. But I do believe in the fact that fear is not an option, so I always try to face it and not be afraid.

I don't like to talk about my dreams. I like to make them happen. I prefer to talk about them when they're done.

I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible.