The design team and I had been discussing how fantastic we thought Celia was. When her agent approached us about collaborating on a line, we leapt on it immediately.

The response, so far, has been phenomenal, and we've booked really big quantities of the pieces.

Fashion is very cyclical, and there's always been a huge demand for retro. It's nice to go back directly to the designer who was so in demand at that time, and ask them to create something new.

Those of us who worked with her thought that she was very gracious with her physical self, very gracious with the public. That included in airports, on sidewalks and in restaurants.

Design is people.

They were very laudatory on our proposal. As a matter of fact, they thought our design and concept was probably better than the other two. It really came down to long-term financial stability for the Hall of Fame, and they thought it would be better up there.