I went to Paris to learn and absorb some of the amazing ambience I was enamored with growing up in Kansas City. I didn't go there to start my own collection. But I never could get an internship, so finally, I was left with just doing my own show.

I really don't see little girls growing up and thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to morph myself so I look like Barbie.'

I have a nostalgia for the years I was growing up and experiencing new things for the first time - so the late '80s and early '90s are always fascinating to me. Those were the times that I was being informed about a lot of my tastes, and so the memories are fused with a lot of emotion.

Designers have a reputation for setting the tone for what people - and especially women - are supposed to wear. How long their skirts should be, things like that. I have a different philosophy: put something out there with humour; let people see that and come around to it on their own.

I needed to be more self-determining, and the most self-determining thing you can do in comedy is stand-up.

The Dictator' - well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

Before I went into comedy I was a loner, very much wrapped up in my own thoughts. But I always liked myself and the way I thought.

All you have in comedy, in general, is just going with your instincts. You can only hope that other people think that what you think is funny is funny. I don't have an answer but I just try to plough straight ahead.