'I normally get up at quarter to eight. My husband, Thadee [Klossowski], brings me breakfast in bed, except for the weekends, when I do it. Then I have a nice sweet-smelling bath, which puts me in a good mood. I have all my jewellery, mostly from my own collections, hanging on a wall, and often it will inspire me for the day. Then, depending on what sort of appointments are planned - and the energy I have - I dress.
Sometimes I think I'll dress in black and put a bright necklace on and that will be it. If I have a lunch I will take a little more care about it. I never think in outfits: I never think this matches this shirt and that looks nice with that jacket. Sometimes I get a mania about one necklace and wear it four days running, obviously with different clothes.
I come to work between 9.30am and 10am. I opened my shop in 2003 after working for almost 30 years with Yves Saint Laurent, who retired in 2002. I didn't have much choice, to tell you the truth, because I couldn't go and work for anybody else after I had worked with the greatest fashion genius of those times. I was too young to retire, so it seemed the most natural thing to do. My brother Alexis [who died last year] and I decorated the shop together.
I buy myself a [pastry] across the street at Rollet Pradier then get down to work. I make all the prototypes for my jewellery at my workbench in the studio above the shop. There are two ranges, the Boutique and the new diffusion line, Fantaisie. I like working with colour and it doesn't always have to be bright, but I like mixing things - I am a bit of a gypsy. I am quite good about making a necklace out of bits and bobs, and making it look very nice. My favourites are turquoise and I adore onyx for the way it sets off other colours so well.
Saint Laurent likes my sense of colour; it is something we share. He has a wonderful sense of colour but held back on it because a lot of Europeans [at that time in the 1970s] thought colour was vulgar or they were afraid of using it. So, for a couturier to say you can wear pistachio with orange and a yellow belt was a help. It put a stamp of 'alrightness' on it.
When I was at Saint Laurent I did the jewellery to go with his collections. The collection was always late, so I would make things in advance. Fortunately, in a maison de couture you could suddenly call up [a supplier] and say, 'Actually, dye all the pearls pink!' So it was clothes related - the clothes dictated the look. Now I design jewellery for itself, it can stand alone and not be a slave to the clothes.
I like to meet friends at lunchtime but one doesn't really lunch any more. You used to lunch for hours but that has gone out the window now, although the French still indulge a bit more than Anglo-Saxon countries. We meet at [restaurant] Le Perchoir or the Assemblee, where I love having my little Kir - a bottle of water and one Kir. I spend most of my time in the studio, where I have an assistant who helps design the clothes, a director of the studio working on the jewellery, because it is such a large collection, and a production director. People come to meet me here. Occasionally I go out to meet suppliers or to see exhibitions for inspiration.
