I was definitely considered different growing up. I learned that being me was all right because my family celebrated those differences.

I grew up with a single mother who brought us up. I always look back at my career, and everything that has happened to me is because of the support of women. My mother, my sister, Michelle Obama, Kate Middleton - all these women have believed in my designs and worn them and given me a platform to increase my visibility.

My goal is: I'm not trying to be snobby, but my clothes are not for everyone, not for every Hollywood celebrity. There is a designer for everyone, and a celebrity for every designer.

It saddens me to see the reality-television shows that are getting so much fanfare that are a celebration of stupidity and the degradation of women. And those women are consistently wearing too short, too tight dresses. I hope the trend of aging gracefully returns.

I've always been an entrepreneur. I start businesses for a living.

Nothing is written in stone. So don't prepare yourself for a long and lucrative career. You might die tomorrow. Your gold holdings might become dust. Just make the music you want to make now and enjoy it.

As I've evolved, I'm capable of doing a lot of things at once, but really, as an entrepreneur and business person, it's more about adding the right structure to be able to handle scaling all those things as opposed to being at the forefront of doing a lot of them.

I didn't want to give up my career. That's what kept me alive, kept me going. I couldn't stop - didn't want to stop - being all these different characters.