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Minted.com is both a global design community and stationery retailer. Independent graphic designers from all over the world submit designs to our ongoing design competitions, and Minted's community votes to tell us what to sell.
Couture has copied my things for years, in addition to countless other costume designers, claiming theirs were the original ideas. It's all part of the business, unfortunately.
Unlike painting, sculpture, or music, typefaces must be useful to someone. Fortunately for designers, the digital age has produced new problems to solve - developing typefaces that work on mobile phones, for one - and enabled better solutions to old problems.
I deal with creativity all the time. What I have fun with is trying to transform creativity into business reality all over the world. To do this, you have to be connected to innovators and designers but also make their ideas livable and concrete.
Modeling gave me so many experiences, like traveling and being exposed to global cultures, but the most valuable lesson has been working with designers who truly are visionaries in their field.
We're making clothes - we aren't saving the world. I'm not saying that designers aren't artists, but at the end of the day, we make clothes. Hopefully we make beautiful clothes with a message, but in the end it's for people to wear. I think that the hype of fashion has come down a level.
I represent a body image that wasn't accepted in high fashion before, and I'm very lucky to be supported by the designers, stylists, and editors that I am: ones that know this is fashion; this is art. It can never stay the same. It's 2015.
There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art. When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice.
I love heels, and as a size 36, I've accumulated a wall of amazing high heels from catwalk shows over the years where designers had to make especially small shoes. Tom Ford's golden versions are my favourite. I do, however, also live in my flat Saint Laurent Chelsea boots or Givenchy sneakers.
I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immortality that a lot of designers long for. You know, those endless exhibitions.
I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!'
I have a showroom where we experiment with twelve cakes. We develop sketches and ideas for cakes for the next season. We work with the top fashion designers to see what type of lace they are using or work with the top florist for us to be able to make various sugar roses or flowers.
We continue to have this illusion that things outside of us aren't driving what we think and believe, when in fact so much of what we spend our attention on is driven by decisions of thousands of engineers and product designers.
It is sad that so many designers don't know how to make. CAD software can make a bad design look palatable! It is sad that four years can be spent on a 3D design course without making anything! People who are great at designing and making have a great advantage.
I guess when I look over my shoulder at other designers, I feel like people are so definitive. It's so clear to me what their aesthetic is, what they're projecting. And I look at my own work and I think, Who could ever decipher what the hell is going on?
As the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, I represent the designers. And while we can by no means take the blame for eating disorders, we can play our part in addressing this important issue.
My designs at Ungaro are a lot more sexual, in more of an obvious way: my personal designers are a little bit more sideways.
Design accelerates the adoption of new ideas. And many of these ideas are important for designers to show that there is a way. When you see things through that lens, you realize it applies to any industry and any form of design.
It's very difficult for designers today. How can someone produce so many shows? Now the minimum is four a year.
I thought, 'It doesn't matter what that woman is wearing,' but then I realised actually it's our job as designers to make women smile; to bring them the chocolate without the calories.
The designers usually don't like to say until we're on the runway. Like when I did Prada last year, I couldn't mention doing Prada or even Tweet or take a picture and put it on Twitter saying I was backstage at the Prada show. And Dolce was the same thing. They like to keep a little surprise, I guess, a little secret for everybody.
Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual. When you see a woman in my clothes, you want to know more about them. To me, that is what distinguishes good designers from bad designers.
It is no longer acceptable to ignore the suffering, and designers must take responsibility for the way that their fur is produced.
Previous first ladies seemed to feel the need to wear a sort of uniform, whereas Michelle Obama likes fashion and is very comfortable in fashion. She's happy to mix high and low, and she loves emerging designers. That will do nothing but good for our industry.
My closet is organized by tops, pants, and outerwear, but not a lot of dresses. Gowns are in another room because I don't often dress formally, even though I design gowns. Like most designers, I have a uniform, and mine is a legging.
Tailoring was considered to be a world that was very traditional, and basically going out of fashion. Fashion designers did not have a real link with tailoring or tradition, so I fused the two worlds together.
I'm not like most designers, who have to set sail on an exotic getaway to get inspired. Most of the time, it's on my walk to work, or sitting in the subway and seeing something random or out of context.
Over the years, I observed that many talented graphic designers, including those in my own family, had difficulty getting their designs to market. I thought it would be possible to hold open stationery design competitions where all designers could participate.
I honestly think that with our generation - Alex Wang, Prabal Gurung, Jason Wu, Christian Cota, Robert Geller - there's a different expectation of what our behavior should be. People expect designers to be good businesspeople and PR people, and I don't think partying is a part of that persona the way it used to be.
There are divisions between a culinary chef and a dessert chef, also called a pastry chef. There are specializations within the pastry chef field. Some pastry chefs specialize in baking breads, while others are master cake designers. Each field requires an exceptional level of creativity and attention to detail.
I've been influenced by some of the greatest designers. Charles Eames. And Bruno Munari in the '50s in Italy - when they had to retool the industry of war into an industry to help society. In a way, I'm influenced by designers that were there at a radical time of change.
Designers have told me that their collections are so me, but I don't always recognise it because if you ask me what my style is, I'm really not that sure.
We are being accused that some models are anorexic. But we as fashion designers cannot be blamed, because you know, when I talk to women around the world, rich and poor and young and old and intellectual and not, what they want to be is skinny. You ask them, 'What is your dream?' It's to be skinny. That's all they want.
One doesn't want fashion to look ridiculous, silly, or out of step with the times - but you do want designers that make you think, that make you look at fashion differently. That's how fashion changes. If it doesn't change, it's not looking forward. And that's important to me.
I truly believe that we're about to enter a second golden age of design. The first one was in the '50s and '60s, when designers like Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, George Nelson and Dieter Rams were shepherds of the brands they were working with. They had influence over the products and how companies communicated and promoted themselves.
If I'm doing something in fashion, I will try to respect the 'laws' of the business, but I will try to keep my integrity and my respect for the designers and for my readers.