I know that my image and my clothing and my output are very colorful and can be arresting and startling in some respects. That is the nature of my work, but I am a simple farm boy, and I am very calm by nature.

When I design, I always pull from things that are significant to me. In my work, I search for happiness and then try to convey that joy in the clothes.

I get love from fans in a big enough dosage that it acts as a shield, and I would not sacrifice that love in order to please the industry.

I've met people with my prints tattooed on them, my face tattooed on them - I have that commitment and love.

I'm not anti-intellectual, but primarily, I try to feel things. Emotions aren't always rational; it's not possible to put them into words.

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.

'What if this funny-looking youngster from Missouri is talented after all?' I think it was a nice place to grow up, but I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

If Michelle Obama had stepped out in an outrageously priced jacket by an Italian designer, heads would have rolled. People would have said it was deplorable.

My country is in the toilet. And when my country is in the toilet, the world is in the toilet.

My story is the American Dream, a hundred percent.

I've been thinking a lot about how we worship celebrity and how we have Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and Jesus all on the same playing field.

You don't have to be born wealthy and have an aristocratic last name or have connections or all these things. If you have a dream, you can believe in something and work hard and struggle and fight for it and still have a chance to succeed.

There's a lot of fashion that I don't respond to and I just walk on. I always look for things that make me happy, and in my work, all I'm doing is trying to convey that joy. Fashion should always be fun.

Suddenly, Dallas has become a big part of my life, and now I feel like I'm part of the fabric of the community here.

I don't make clothes for the critics.

McDonald's, Barbie - they're all icons, recognizable from London to Timbuktu.

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

I think Barbie and I are very similar in many respects. That's why she made such a great muse for the summer Moschino collection.

I like the mix of something farmlike and something futuristic and artsy mixed together. It's kind of both my worlds.

One thing I have that the majority of other designers don't is humor. That's distinctly my approach, and it was distinctly Franco Moschino's, too.

I don't think the distinction between high and low culture exists anymore.

An Isaac Mizrahi fashion-show ticket signed by Steven Meisel. I rushed up to Meisel at the end of the show and asked him to autograph the card that had his name and seating assignment on it. It was an incredible moment when he shot the autumn/winter 2014 Moschino campaign.

It was here in L.A., before 'I Kissed a Girl' and all that. She stopped me and told me she was a huge fan and that she was a singer and that one day she hoped that I would dress her. I ended up dressing her for her record release.

I feel my role is to push boundaries. I don't like things to be safe and sedentary. So controversy is the cross I have to bear.