Angelica Cheung (Editor-in-Chief, Vogue China)

 ‘A red dress my mother made for me when I was a teenager. I haven’t worn it in over 20 years, but I will always keep it.’

Tory Burch (Designer, New York Fashion Week)

 ‘A sunflower pendant my father had made for his mother.’

Sarah Rutson (Vice President, Global Buying at Net-a-Porter)

‘It’s a family signet ring, a very large signet ring which was unusual for a woman, it comes from about 1720, so it was a great great great great grandmother, and she was a very bold dresser’

Anna Dello Russo (creative consultant, Vogue Japan)

‘I collect clothes…it’s not about this piece, another piece…all of them are a treasury. It’s an entire collection…’

Mary Katrantzou (Designer, London fashion week)

‘I’d say my Alaia dress. It has really intricate embroidery in it, and comes out for very very special events. I only wore it to see the Queen and to the British Fashion Awards. And a pair of Miu Miu earring’

Jenna Lyons (Creative Director and President, J Crew)

‘My ten-year-old Okura jeans’

Aerin Lauder (Senior Vice President and Creative Director, Estee Lauder)

‘My Tiffany gold wedding band’

Photo courtesy of businessoffashion.com, Noah Griffel, Vogue

All who meet her would agree that Mary is just so lovely. Her understated personality belies her overstated creations. Architectural studies and time at London’s creative hothouse, St.Martin’s are evident in her extraordinary talent. Designing prints and cutting patterns in tandem ensures precision graphic placement on the exacting cuts of her gravity-defying lampshade skirts and historically inspired bustled dresses.

Mary herself wears only monotone – black on black – the perfect blank canvas for the cacophony of color and pattern that drives her own fierce creativity.

Mary is my muse for this month…

KOTUR: What’s in your makeup bag?
Mary: Oh my make-up bag, it’s really large… Estee Lauder doublewear, there’s Chanel coverage like a mask, compressed powder. What is there? Chanel nail polish – midnight blue. And what else do I have? I have lipgloss by MAC. They give me a goodie bag after every show and I love the lipbalm I got. And I have Rodial Glam Balm.

KOTUR: What are your desert island essentials?
Mary: My boyfriend, an iPod… a bottle of wine. That would be good, it would last until midnight at least.

KOTUR: Do you have a beauty secret?
Mary: My beauty secret would have been sleep – but I don’t get any of it. I also really like a foot massage. I think it really energizes you if it’s done properly.

KOTUR: How would your female friends describe your style?
Mary: Very monochrome, and quite definitive. I usually either wear Alaia or Topshop, that’s it.

KOTUR: What’s the most treasured item in your wardrobe?
Mary: I’d say my Alaia dress. It has really intricate embroidery in it, and comes out for very very special events. I only wore it to see the Queen and to the British Fashion Awards. And a pair of Miu Miu earrings

KOTUR: What do you never leave home without?
Mary: My mobile

KOTUR: Hot date with your boyfriend, what do you wear?
Mary: I think I still wear my Alaia skirt, and I probably wear on top… oh what do I wear? When I met my boyfriend I was wearing jeans, a miniskirt on top and a bikini – it was a pool party! But I’d say my Alaia skirt and just a black blouse.

KOTUR: If you could live in any other time in fashion….
Mary: It’s a wide range, but I’d like to have lived in the 40’s or 50’s. I think that was a really nice time in terms of how a home started to be decorated, and how a woman with a very cultured and travelled eye could be creative. Just like last fall, where I was inspired by Babe Paley.

KOTUR: OK, you’re the fashion police for the day, what do you ban?
Mary: I was going to say black – but then I have nothing to wear!

KOTUR: How old is too old for jeans?
Mary: No, I think there’s no old too old for jeans. You can wear jeans until you’re 70.

KOTUR: Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Mary: I started up smoking again – I had quit for 3 years so that wasn’t good at all. Any guilty pleasures? I think just bad TV – that’s guilty pleasure.

KOTUR: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Mary: I think it’s probably the most basic, that just in terms of your career, you need to take it one step at a time and just remain really focused on what it is that you do and remain on that kind of path and don’t deviate. So I stay with that.

KOTUR: What’s your favorite smell?
Mary: Gucci perfume 2. I like freshly baked bread as well and freshly shampooed hair.

KOTUR: And what’s your idea for great holiday?
Mary: For me it’s going back to Greece. We have a summer house in the small island called Spetses, so I love being able to go back there to see my family and see friends of mine who grew up together summer to summer in my younger years.

KOTUR: What do you most proud of?
Mary: I think what I achieved so far, in the fact that you know… I mean I’m still quite young, so I think being able to have a life with my boyfriend; we’ve been together for 10 years. He really pushes me to achieve and to be ambitious on what I do, and I am really happy with where I am.

KOTUR: What do you least proud of?
Mary: I’m least proud of… how stressed I get before fashion week, going backstage in the show. I just wish you have more time to balance things out… I just feel you can’t read as much as you used to because you’re so involved in work and your news knowledge is only headlines because again you don’t have the time. So it’s not that I’m not proud of that, but I just wish I had more time to do certain things.

KOTUR: Who would you like to meet in history?
Mary: In history, I’d love to meet the Marchesa Luisa Casati

KOTUR: How would you like to be remembered?
Mary: I‘d like to be remembered from my work.

KOTUR: What would you like to be reincarnated as?
Mary: A medium. Read people’s futures – I’d like to do that.

KOTUR: What’s your pure bliss?
Mary: Sleep at the moment is pure pure bliss…