I think that's what you and I have in common, Donatella Versace, that careful balance. It makes me proud to be an Italian. In the end, I am proud to do what I do.
When I started, everyone said couture was finished and I was so scared. Actually I was more terrorized than scared. I was arriving from a provincial area of Italy. They called me in to do Givenchy and I just thought, Wow.
When I went to England, to Saint Martins, I was traumatized, in a positive way. It was that British sense of transgression and the dark. Then when I went to Paris, I was doing couture, which everyone was saying was finished. Bullshit! For me, in the end, it was all a mixing of ingredients.
The elegance of the Italian South is a very strong elegance and it is one that I bring. It is a sexy elegance - or at least, let's say less chaste.
Even at the beginning when I arrived at Givenchy, there were certainly people who supported me, but not everyone loved me. They were saying, "Why an Italian who acts Gothic?" Never mind the fact that Italy is one of the main exhibitors of Gothic art in the world. But it was like, "No, Italians should only do sexy!"
I was lucky. From the time I was a little, I was always surrounded by women, and I am very attracted to the feminine world, because I love the strength and romanticism, which in the end, you can find in my style.
What I very much admire about the Versace maison, and what I am still trying to learn to do myself as I am still young, is that from day one until today, Versace is the peak of sexy but never crosses that red line into the vulgar.
When I do a show I have such high emotion; the energy is amazing - but, people don't really see the details and the work and the experimentation that we, the designers, put into the clothes. With prêt-à-porter you're having a look.
This is very much part of my style, I work a lot on the back - I love the back of clothes for men. I love even T-shirts printed behind. I think, "Why do you want to show only the front?"
These five years as a couturier have really changed my way of seeing fashion and my confidence with fashion. Couture is a dream.
I do the final fitting because the client wants me there. They're not spoilt, they really understand that you're very busy, but they just want you to say what you think - for just ten minutes. They really want to know your opinion because it really is a service at the end of the day, a luxury service.
In the beginning, to be honest I was super-scared. I turned up and took a step back and said, 'I am here to learn,' and I feel the same today. I've got only to learn from these people because they have been doing couture for 30 or 40 years, so I keep learning every season.
In prêt-à-porter now we understandably need to make the collection satisfy the big market more, so couture is extra special.
In Italy, especially in '70s and '80s, there was a lot of racism between north and south. And my mom immigrated from the south to the north, from Puglia, the heel of Italy. But what made me feel different was society, not my family.
I'm very well off but I can stay with normal people. I can do a super-luxury life, but I can do a very normal life and I'm not scared.
I started to draw and design clothes that I couldn't find, because everything was all luxury, fashion clothes or very straight. So I mixed all of that together: Who says I can't put a man in a skirt? Who says that a man can't wear lace? Who says that men can't wear Swarovski? Who says that men can't wear makeup? You know what I'm like; for me, straight, gay, women, men, trans, we're all the same. I don't see difference.
My mom and my sisters were amazing; they always see the good in people. My mom, she doesn't know how to write and read much, but she's one of the most fantastic women I've met in my life.
My mom always said to us, "You cannot judge anybody because of the color of skin." There were a lot of African immigrants in Italy at the time, and people would not even say hi in the street. And my mom, she would invite these people to the house. This is what I got from my mom: to not judge people because of their sexuality, their skin color, their religion, nothing.
I used to hate to go to school, because when it was Friday afternoon and everybody was finished school, I knew I was going to work Saturday and Sunday.
This is why I decided to work with Nike, too, because it is even more mass-market than Givenchy and could make entry-price shoes and make people dream to be part of the journey.
At the beginning, I didn't see what Givenchy could give my career. It was like, "Okay, I'll do it for the money for a few years to help my mom and my sisters."
When I started at 9, I was working with plaster. I worked with a florist. It was a little illegal for kids to work. They would give you tips because they couldn't really give you wages.
We didn't have a television, so we sat around the table, and me and my sisters and my mom would do these jobs, like, a penny for a piece, you know, these paper jobs. You know, what really saved me as a human today is my sisters and my mom.
Every two to three weeks, I was changing around my room. My room was made out of nothing, basically - a magazine, a little radio, a little bed - and I had the sensibility to put things together and match things in a certain way so that they were very special.
I didn't have many friends. I was very shy ... And, then, even worse, when I was 14 I became Gothic. I had long, black hair. I was going to school with makeup. Because I was trying to find my language, to scream to the world that I felt so closed in a box where I was living.
