“I’m only waiting for Lindsay Lohan’s fashion collection to come out. Ten years from now, there may be no real designers left.”

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It’s a metaphor for women’s lives, their creativity.

Service is a prerequisite for anything relating to luxury. That makes it (shopping) sensual and pleasurable.

Fashion to me has become very disposable; I wanted to get back to craft, to clothes that could last.

I was the girl who nobody thought would ever get married. I was going to be a fashion nun the rest of my life. There are generations of them, those fashion nuns, living, eating, breathing clothes.

I’ve been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too – what I should wear.

New York for me is about work. If L.A. were to become a West Coast version of that, I’d shoot myself. The climate, the lifestyle – it really fits as the yin to my New York yang.

When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great.

Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.

I work with structure, but I go outside the box and give it my own spin. I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes – where a woman’s personality and sense of style are realized.

All those years of skating and dancing have carried over. I can’t design anything without thinking of how a woman’s body will look and move when she’s wearing it.

Even the most understated ceremony involves a certain respect for ritual and pageantry. No one plays more of a significant role than the bride’s attendants.

It’s hard to balance everything. It’s always challenging.

I hate phones. All businesses are personal businesses, and I always try my best to get back to people, but sometimes the barrage of calls is so enormous that if I just answered calls I would do nothing else.

I do think I know more about clothes than any 500 designers, because there’s nothing like wearing them. You buy them, you study them, and you start to understand how they’re crafted.

I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman.

I am not the sort of woman who would wear high heels with a bathing suit. Let’s get that straight right now.

You have been given everything you need to design the life you desire. You’ve got this.

Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible.

I was struggling to find a way to make evening clothes more deconstructed. I like to think that I translated the Latin concept in a more modern way. I don’t think that I was that literal.

The way a dancer can bring the crowd to its feet with a drawn-out, well-executed pirouette is the excitement I wanted to capture with this design.

The country’s top chefs, designers, media personalities and businesses are part of this dynamic city. We know that Chicagoans are used to the highest standards.

Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.

When God designs to forgive us he changes our hearts and turns us to obedience by His Spirit.

White folks are not going to come to see a bunch of guys with tattoos, with cornrows. I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks different, they’re stupid.