“A bride should look at everything she possibly can…just so she can experiment and see what makes her really feel beautiful or glamorous or classical or whatever she desires to be on that particular day.”

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.

I started at the very highest level so the upper end is something I know very well. I know it instinctively. But all the years I was designing, it frustrated me that I could reach so few women.

I like the gritty parts of fashion, the design, the studio, the pictures.

People get very trapped where they are. When they hear ‘fashion’ they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it’s so elitist.

There was no relationship between a wedding dress and fashion. There was no good taste, either. I realized that I could make an impression in terms of changing and readdressing the whole industry of bridal.

Is she going to, or has she done it? Has it happened? What is the story here?

I was trying to manage school and training for the Olympics and ended up not doing well at either. That was a big lesson in my life. My mother expected both.

It’s a remarkable exercise to sit and look at your own work over the years.

My bat does the talking when I am on the field, off it, I let my style do it!

You ready? I have gold teeth, I have braids, I’m wearing Rick Owens moon boots, I have rips in my denim, a biker vest, I love artsy girls, my favourite artists are Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. I’m obsessed with being different.

It’s the little things that make us who we are in the bigger world.

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.

I wear black all the time.

Beauty is the enemy . We try to conquer not feeling beautiful all our lives. It’s a battle that can’t be won. There’s no definition of beauty. The only way to achieve beauty is to feel it from inside without breaking down into individual physical attributes.

All my life, men have told me I wasn’t pretty enough – even the men I was dating. And I’d be like, ‘Well, why are you with me, then?’ It’s always been men putting me down just like my dad. To this day when someone says I’m cute, I can’t see it. I don’t see it no matter what anybody says.

It is not fitting, when one is in God’s service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.