Have you ever held a snake? Well, let me tell you, it is so erotic.

That's why you have to keep your mind open - so that you can be given the privilege to have five weeks in Japan and take all of that in. I mean, that's privilege to be able to do that. And you have to give that privilege back - it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the madding crowd.

I remember once I didn't like a dress that we had to shoot - I'll never forget this - and so I turned it inside out and put it on the model backward.

I think the reason for vulgarity is because of the freedom that there is now to do certain things, and a lack of sophistication on the part of some people who, in their work, like to give the impression of, Has there been intercourse or not? Are they about to? But they take it into a realm that has a vulgar touch to it.

I cannot imagine what an influence a five-week trip to the Orient had on me. I mean, the culture, the absorption of the Japanese way of life, the Japanese way of thinking, the discipline. The entire thing was an extraordinary experience. So these were more than memorable things to me.

I hate grunge. It was the worst period of my life.

I think there a lot of great photographers working right now in the 2010. At the same time I do occasionally feel a great disappointment in some of the things that I see from certain people. But it is today.

How many times have people said to me, I think those pants are incredible, but I could never wear them. Well, why not? What's so different about these pants? I wear very classic things, but maybe with a little change here or there.

I like people with guts. I want to feel in the clothes what the designer is really feeling when they're alone with themselves and their fabrics and they're drawings, and what happens when they let the creativity that they have been blessed with come forward. That's why they are who they are.

There are certain people who hang onto nostalgia and I wish they wouldn't. I wish the young beautiful actresses and other people - I wish they would not hark back to clothes that look more like they've dressed in their mother's clothes.

You cannot squelch what's happening at the moment - you cannot put a lid on it and squash it down.

There are some very creative people out there who are like Steven Meisel, and that is why their work is so extraordinary.

I think movies also played a part in my interest in fashion. I've also always been hooked on the movies. From my early teens on, I always had my favorite movie stars who I admired, like Carole Lombard and Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, and the men in my life who I loved, like Gary Cooper.

I wear all my T-shirts from Helmut Lang with the holes in the elbows, which people always speak of. When my husband gets a hole in his sweater, at his elbow, he says, It's very Helmut Lang!

I will never get tired of looking at works by Pablo Picasso. I will never get tired of looking at work by Francis Bacon or Henry Moore or Francisco Goya. You cannot tire of the work these people have made because you can look it over and over again - the same thing - and always see something different.

Helmut Lang is an amazing man - always striving, always moving forward.

I love street, adore street. Life is about mixing things and to be divine in the streets. Voila!