The clothes you create seem a direct emanation of your land. What suggestions and emotions do you get form your land of birth?
Often I have been defined a thinker, a philosopher, everything besides a fashion creator. I like to think fashion in these terms, in the sense that I don't like fashion as a simple object for use. Through fashion you can also try to convey feelings, vocations, culture. These messages are much stronger in the high fashion line, where you can experiment in 360°, and where collocation is more precise. The prèt-à-porter becomes inevitably more 'use', and therefore we must move with more care, even if I didn't hold anything back in the fall-winter 2001/02 collection. Especially in the use of materials in details: a button in lava stone, wool machining made with a loom, leathers which are still hand-worked, with that idea of inlays and patchwork. Especially because I have these thoughts on the matter, I succeed in doing these things, and this bond with the earth is a matter bond. On the same line I am conceptually elaborating the next collection, which will come out in September: it will be very matter related. Also because someone who buys a dress of mine, usually wants it for a special event or day, definitely not for the very every day office use.
 
Is it in the same context that you place your activity as a theatre costume designer?
Absolutely yes. I enjoy myself thoroughly. I had my debut in the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, with an extraordinary production of "Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel" by Jean Cocteau, and the creation of Micha Van Hoecke "A Paris". It is a Parisian cross-section which is very suggestive: a world of clochard, a Paris seen through the eyes of the clochard, in Cocteau's time, therefore until the 60's. Theatre is definitely my world, I feel in very strongly, because you breathe a certain kind of atmosphere, of thought, of culture. I will be currently committed to a great event in Catania: the reopening of a Greek theatre that will be returned to the city. It holds an incredible position, you enter from the doors of a palace: it is totally hidden, but it can hold 8.000 people. This new project - still with Micha Van Hoecke - should concretise in the first week of September.

So fashion is not just in Milan?
Milan is a world, high fashion is another world, theatre is yet another world. At the moment it is easy for me to decline these collections in different ways, with different thoughts and intensities. High fashion is a little the forge of all these great ideas and experimenting. And the prèt-à-porter is like your first son, conceptually tied to this.

How are your relations with abroad?
High fashion is particularly appreciated abroad: America, Europe, the Emirates. Especially in the Arab world I am very well known and esteemed. They love these experimental things, even when extreme. Strangely, because they are sometimes concepts which are too difficult even for us, but they accept everything, it is wonderful.

According to you, is there a recognisable style that characterises Italian fashion, beyond the individual maisons?
No. There are Italian designers. We have such precise definitions, especially in the five, six, seven names that form the crown of the made in Italy. If we think of an Armani, a Versace, a Valentino, they are designers who have a well defined line. Italian style, on the other hand, is a matter of taste, a bit like Italian art. What distinguishes us in the world is taste, then there are designers, who have the great capacity to create this style, but each one creates his own. There isn't an Italian style by definition. There is Italian taste on one side and Italian designers, capable of creating a style. They are not many in this landscape, but those we do have are very high definition.