“Ready-to-wear is what I’ve wanted to do since the beginning. I’m not a girl who spends my life in a ballgown”

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.

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.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity

In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

To understand your fear is the beginning of really seeing.

If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children.

Real love begins where nothing is expected in return.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.