It's like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf... most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

When one is the type of writer who cares about the meaning of the historically specific setting, the history itself is not something that I would call backdrop. It's not window dressing for a timeless relationship about love and betrayal. For me, the setting and the specific history are active co-agents with me in trying to form the novel.

As awesome as it is to be with a big act and get three catered meals a day and get a dressing room with an actual shower in it, it's hard sometimes as a new artist to come across in 25 minutes. You get 25 minutes to hopefully impress these people. I think the longer set is more suitable for us and gives us an opportunity to connect better.

One needs determination to bring in changes in the lives of Devadasis. I would approach them wearing pants and t-shirt and without a bindi, they would chase me away. When I narrated the experience to my father, he told me to don traditional wear and dress like them. After bringing in changes in my dressing style, the Devadasis welcomed me.

We design for a whole range of ages and body types, and we always have done. What's great about us is that the common thing that they all like is an accessible eccentricity of an accessible flamboyance, and I think the super thing about that, it isn't age-specific: you're not only dressing 25-year-olds; we're dressing women from 25 to 65+.

In the 1960s, my father chose to introduce Italian-style clothing into a world that was filled with boxy Brooks Brothers suits. So if you were dressing in his clothes in New York or California, you were breaking a rule. And my mother, Risha, who is still living, has always been an activist. I don't think my mom has met a cause she doesn't like.

When I was on 'The View,' I went backstage to Whoopi Goldberg's dressing room, and she told me, 'People are going to love what you do, and people are going to hate what you do, but you have to keep doing it. You have to stand up and do what you know is true, despite what people are going to say.' And I'm taking that into every aspect of my life.

I ushered at the Shubert in New Haven during graduate school when plays en route to Broadway still went out of town to try out. I worked backstage at summer stock doing jobs from garbage man to strapping on Herbert Marshall's wooden leg to fixing Gloria Swanson's broken plumbing in her dressing room with her yelling at me as I worked the plunger.

Prince was outside his dressing room, shaking one of those little Easter egg maracas. His hair was straightened to a soft wave; his eyelashes were unfairly lovely. He smelled like the most expensive shelf in the Sephora perfume aisle. This man wearing eyeliner, heels and ladies' perfume somehow managed to be more masculine than the burly bodyguard.

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