Christophe Lemaitre quotes:

Fashion has always been nourished by the past. At the end of the day, where the inspiration comes from doesn't matter. It's what you do with it. How you treat it, how you translate it into a contemporary wardrobe. You put it in a shaker.

It's very difficult to do street casting with girls, because a beautiful girl in real life won't necessarily have the silhouette or the presence needed for a show.

I don't like clothes that constrict. The idea is that they should accompany and help you. There's nothing superficial about getting dressed. Clothes can give you self-confidence and help you be yourself.

Clothes should be practical. I like the concept of easy wear. I think [86-year-old] actress Emmanuelle Riva was extremely chic. She's super stylish. At the Cesars, she was wearing this beautiful red silk dress. I don't know whose it was.

I am made of endless hours. Not just split seconds.

I'm happy when I see a girl on the bus, or on the street, and start wondering about her. Sometimes I see a woman and I ask myself: Who is she? You want to know what her job is. Who she is? You start fantasizing. There's a certain aura, a certain charm that we try to reproduce.

Hermès and my own brand share the same philosophy, the same vision of women, but the two aren't identical.

What's important for me is to find the right kind of girls who express a vision of a woman. We like girls who look smart and intelligent with natural beauty - a certain quality of skin and hair. And she doesn't look exactly like a model.

We are extremely precise about the girls we like; they're not necessarily the "It" girls of the season. Sometimes this "It" girl business gets a bit hysterical. It's all about which girl did which shoot with which photographer.

We have a direct contact with our clothes; they're like a little house. You have to feel good and at home in what you wear and. I think that's elegance. Chanel said something like: "When a woman is badly dressed, one sees the dress, and when she is well dressed, one sees the woman." That's what I'm talking about.

It's a completely independent atelier and company. We develop the prototypes here. There's a pattern maker, a sample maker, a commercial team, a head of sales, an in-house production team. That's the price of independence. And in the studio I work closely with Sarah-Linh on the collection, and Nao takes care of development.

I'm very clear about what I want to say. I have a great team and it's going well. I have a feeling of maturity.

What I like to do is take something from a man's wardrobe and re-proportion it slightly. We've got another jacket in this collection with a smaller shoulder. It's the idea of subtle feminization, to make the clothes more delicate.