“Customers are very demanding and well informed.”

“Dreams can still come true; you need a great deal of energy and determination, and a little bit of luck.”

“Fashion is OK for five days, one minute, six months, but style is for the rest of the life.”

“Fashion takes its inspiration from society and everyday life, which is the same for everyone, and this is perhaps the reason why certain elements recur.”

“I don't have the time to be bored.”

“I drive around on my scooter in Milan alone - we don't have bodyguards or anything like that. I am a fashion designer, not a celebrity, and although I get stopped for autographs and the like, I don't think I am famous.”

“I had a few problems. I didn't realise it until I started going to therapy. I did it for 10 years, two days a week, and pretty quickly I understood that a lot of my suffering, many of my issues, were rooted in my realising that I was gay when I was a little boy. I knew I was different. That made me very fragile.”

“I like to eat pizza and spaghetti pomodoro, and I'm crazy for dessert. I like all of them: cassata, cheesecake, biscuits.”

“I love the Weather Channel because my mood changes a lot according to the weather!”

“I never talked about homosexuality with my family. After I was 18, they know everything, but I never talk; it was like an information but in silence. I start to talk when I was 32, it was good for me - it was like a liberation. I'm talking about a love story. I'm not talking about sex because love is love.”

“In life you need to take a risk.”

“In my whole life, I've worn black tie three times. I can't tie the knot myself.”

“In my whole life, I've worn black tie three times. I can't tie the knot myself. Once, at the premiere of the opera, I got to La Scala before Domenico, and I was hiding in the corner until he arrived, and I said, 'Quick, you have to tie my tie, please!' Otherwise, I'll wear a tuxedo jacket with jeans and my bling-bling cross.”

“Italians know that what matters is style, not fashion. Italian style does not have social or age boundaries.”

“My dream is to have a baby, not to adopt one, because I am not up to it and I don't feel strong enough. I want my own child, a biological child, the fruit of my sperm, conceived through artificial insemination because it wouldn't make sense for me to make love to a woman I don't love.”

“My memories are of denim. I remember being 12 in my Levi's. Wow!”

“My memories are of denim. I remember being 12 in my Levi's. Wow! As a teenager in Milan, I was really fascinated by Fiorucci, but at the time I was not rich enough to buy. Oh my God! I made a collection of Fiorucci shopping bags, and my mother, she still has them and my stickers, and now I invite Elio Fiorucci to our shows.”

“My mum is totally crazy for fashion still. Her job was as a laundress, but I loved it when she would dress up in her red suit with a mini jacket and flared trousers and get her wig fixed at the hairdresser's - it was the time of wigs - and we would go shopping.”

“Our fashion for us, it's an expression; first of all of life, I put all of myself in my fashion. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but this is a mirror, an expression about Domenico and Stefano. It's not just a profession: it's a person with a lot of personality.”

“Sugar is like a drug. If I have one bite, I need to eat it all. I can eat an entire panettone in one sitting.”

“To me, flowers are happiness.”

“We don't think only men can be powerful and strong. Behind the heads of the Mafia, the leaders of culture, there are always very strong women. European culture is a matriarchy, especially in the south. The women have a lot of power.”

“What I can say is that there are some collections that come easily, and others that require more work.”

“What the fashion system says and what the fashion customer says are really two different things.”

“You don't change your style by changing your bag. You change it with your clothes.”

“You have to work very hard behind the scenes, to make a message clear enough for a lot of people to understand.”