Anna Sui loves tea roses and thumbs her nose at fashion's current dalliance with pared-down chic, all grey, lean and intellectual. She favours glittery lipstick, powder puffs made of lavender fluff, and likes to see as many of her cousins as possible - her mother has 11 siblings, her father 14 - at her New York fashion shows.
And for an ethnic Chinese who has used fleeting references to her heritage in her surreal, kaleidoscopic collections, Sui made her first trip to China about a year ago.
'My mother told me to use the toilet before crossing the border' is the most potent memory Sui carries of the trip, preferring to talk about other things instead.
Indeed, we were there to talk about other things, like the new make-up line that Sui would unveil that night in Cannes, during one of the many social functions cluttering the Tax Free World Expo calendar.
Sui had been approached a couple of years earlier by Cosmopolitan Cosmetics, an international conglomerate that has developed, among other things, the hugely popular Gucci fragrance Envy for Men. Would she, they asked, be interested to work with them on creating a make-up and fragrance line that would add a dimension to her own name, and provide Cosmopolitan with a funky, exciting edge? Sui jumped at the opportunity, describing it as a dream come true. The resulting collection is pretty dreamy, too: lacquer-black lipstick tubes capped with tiny rosebuds and shimmering pots of eye-shadow tucked away into packages festooned with little tea roses.
'It's what I love, it's the colours I want to wear. There is a definite signature look about it,' said Sui.
No doubt. Here is the woman who has dubbed one of her collections Tibetan Surfers, whose store in New York's trendy Soho contains such delectables as fur-covered Eskimo-like boots, woolly lurex-infused knits in vibrant shades and little lingerie dresses in cobalt and peach. Her Manhattan apartment, featured in design bible Architectural Digest, boasts walls and floors painted Indian red and a life-size mannequin of legendary fashion diva Diana Vreeland. Indeed, Sui has made kitsch cool.