“In fashion, people only eat cigarettes. I have always preferred food. I try to eat exceptionally well every day. But I hate trendy restaurants – they make me feel nervous. They should be about the quality of the food not the attitude of the staff. That’s why Maisen would be the ­setting of my final meal on earth. I first came to Japan 15 years ago and discovered Maisen last year, during a visit to Tokyo with my wife and children. We just wandered in for some food one day and straight away I knew it was a good place. I love the fact that there is no choice. You eat tonkatsu [the Japanese take on pork schnitzel]. Simple. I find it very boring sitting at a table in silence with everyone reading a long menu.

During my last meal, I would open a bottle of Condrieu, a delicious white wine from Côtes du Rhône. It is very difficult to make as it involves grape-pickers ­dangling off mountains. It is also hard to buy, even if you have money, as they only normally sell six bottles at a time. In terms of my favourite dinner companions, I would maybe like to have a drink with Bill Murray to talk about our Tokyo experiences. But my ideal dinner guest is in fact my 19-year-old daughter, who is studying philosophy and history. I love it when she sits at the table and asks about Nietzsche and his social organism theories or about the Russian Revolution and the roles of Lenin and Stalin. I may work in fashion but I always feel the need to be challenged in life and to think. But life does not have to be entirely heavy. I would also invite to the table one of my friends who is very good at gossiping. We all knew about Carla Bruni long before it all came out.

Either way, I would want guests who eat their food. So many people in fashion are obsessed with being slim. They think a few peanuts are the same as a meal. I am not a ‘foodie’ person. But I am a quality person. My first food memory was eating fish eggs in Tunisia. Bought fresh in the sac, the eggs are removed, washed, sprinkled in salt and laid in the sun to dry for a few days. I always used to steal my grandfather’s fish eggs. I would scrape some off with a knife and eat them raw. They taste better than caviar.

Food in Japan is wonderful. I fell in love with sushi many years ago in Paris during my first fashion job with Kenzo. I found a plate of sushi one morning, which turned out to be Kenzo’s supper from the night before. It was delicious, high-quality sushi. After that, I went into work extra early so I could eat his leftovers. I was very poor at the time.

Good quality food is so easy to find in Tokyo. Recently, I went to a local place and ate this crazy sushi – sea urchins and other creatures. It cost only ¥2,100 [€13]. You could never get that in France. Many restaurants in Paris are more concerned about the hair and make-up. They dress up poor-quality beef in a fancy sauce to make it look gorgeous. But you know exactly what you are getting at Maisen. My wife and I jokingly call having dinner at Maisen ‘going for a Meisel’ after the photographer Steven Meisel, because he is very over the top – the complete opposite of Maisen. In short, my perfect restaurant.”