The great thing about having a pool in L.A. is that I can use it year-round. And since I've always been an athlete, staying fit is very important.
I make things of my own that aren't that glam, but I'm not known for that, which has always been a bit of a frustration for me.
Let's be realistic, how many people are buying a $2,000 skirt? I love to design things that people can actually buy. I'm staggered by what a boot costs today.
Brides today are increasingly sensitive to the tastes, feelings and finances of their attendants.
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.
It's hard to juggle being a businessperson with being a creative person. You have to organize yourself - PR needs me for PR, and the licensing division needs me for licensing, the bridal people need me for bridal.
Just because you're from a city ten miles outside of St. Paul. It doesn't mean you don't read magazines, or the incredible Internet, and what's going on in the world. I never, ever take a client, or women, for granted.
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.
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.
Whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror. Where I used to practice in New York City, there was a mirror so you could actually watch yourself skate. And nowadays my golf teacher will film me swinging so I can see what I am doing. Having looked first at myself and my own body for so long as one does as a dancer and a skater, it was so natural to do fashion.
One thing about skating that I don't think people focus on enough is the music factor. The music is a huge component of figure skating. It can dictate not only the choreography but the emotion. If it's not the right music it can ruin a performance.
In terms of bridal dress, I've tried everything. I've tried short, long, deconstructed, constructed, bustiers, working in fabrics, working in color. I've been working in color in bridal for probably 15 years. Who else would do an entire collection dipped in tea? I did that one year. My design team dipped every single dress in tea in a bathtub. I did that just because I wanted to work out of the vocabulary of white.
It's kind of hard when your moniker is "bridal" and "evening" for people to understand that I don't run around in a bridal gown all day, nor do I run around in an evening gown. I run around in clothes that resonate for me. I wanted to do those clothes in my ready-to-wear collection - because I don't know how you can be a woman designing for other women and not relate it back to yourself.
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. Design is about point of view, and there should be some sort of woman or lifestyle or attitude in one's head as a designer. So my being able to reach the masses was something that meant a great deal to me - especially for women who could never wear Vera Wang.
