I brought a lot of my own pieces of clothes to the design room when I first met with the design team just so they could see what my style was like.
Growing up, Guess always had these amazing billboards and cool affordable clothing. I wore it then, and I still wear it now! It's come full-circle. When I design the clothes, I have a very good team around me, showing me different pieces and cuts.
If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives, and give them carte blanche.
I ended up going to do a matches program at the state for industrial design. And from there, I got hired at IDEO to joint their design team there - and basically, you are starting as an industrial designer to design products - and then kept asking the question, 'What else can design accomplish? What else can design do?'
Throughout my partnership with Reebok, I've loved working closely with their product and design team in our shared mission of creating the best fitness products in the world.
I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left.
When I am there at our global product development centers, I am meeting with the design team and reviewing design work being done there and meeting with engineers responsible for work being done specific to that region, meeting with purchasing team.
I have an all-Japanese design team, and none of them speak English. So it's often funny and surprising how my ideas end up lost in translation.
Collaborations are incredibly important in design.
I'm like a conductor. I come up with ideas, and I get all these people to make great music together. I have a team of really talented assistant designers. I have architects in my office. People I trained from the beginning in menswear, womenswear, and home. I have a great team who know what I want and feel and translate that into beautiful results.
I pay two full-time assistants in my studio, plus consultants who are architects, engineers, and landscape architects, as well as lighting designers.
Most pieces take between two and three weeks and involve more than 40 people from the fabric cutters to the embroiders to the sewers. It's an elaborate undertaking.
Wearing a bold print gets harder as you get older. It's safer to stick to subtle prints or block colours. I have always found prints quite tricky. My daughter Carly, who is on the design team at Stella McCartney, is obsessed with them.
The wardrobe department isn't a bunch of elves there to serve you; they're artists with vision. Honor them.
When I design the clothes, I have a very good team around me, showing me different pieces and cuts. I'm very involved in the process, I go to L.A. and get onto the design floor, and I help pick out the best pieces.
