It’s about to be Carine Roitfeld season, with the upcoming launch of her new magazine and MAC collaboration. She’s also a grandma, looks amazing and is friends with Karl Lagerfeld and Tom Ford. Basically, she’s someone we can all learn a lot from, and we do in a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar. She reveals what she thinks about her appearance (beyond looking like Iggy Pop), whether or not she reads French Vogue, how she’s like Steve Jobs and, perhaps most importantly, how she has that body (ballet is involved).

Read on for the highlights.

On her appearance:

“I’m not bad-looking, but I’m not a beauty either,” she says. “I think I have character, and that is what people like in me.”

On being relatable in her MAC campaign:

I think women can recognize themselves in that picture. They see ‘Oh, she’s not wearing too much makeup, she’s not too much dressed, she’s not too much bizarre. She’s very much like another woman—simple.’?

On being like Steve Jobs when it comes to her magazine:

I’m using new people, so I’m going to fight to make them stars. It’s very risky. I like to take risks. It’s very exciting in a way. It’s a bit Steve Jobs, no? Each day is a new challenge to find the model, the photographer, the money, the location, you know?

She worried about not getting front row after leaving Vogue:

Some people were supportive. But you think, Maybe I never get invited for the next show; maybe I won’t be front row. Of course you’re disappointed by some people, but you discover other people too.

She walked on Tom Ford’s back with high heels once:

Tom is crazy. I remember once, his back hurt and he asked me to walk on him with my high heels on.

On how she stays thin and how ballet added five centimeters to her butt:

“I don’t have a big appetite,” she says. “I don’t eat a lot, to be honest—never. I’m a bit like a little bird, picking all day long, but I’m not getting pasta or getting all those things, you know? So I think it’s my morphology. I’ve always been skinny. … I try to be in shape to be a young grandma.” She has taken up ballet, which she says has significantly altered her shape, specifically her derriere—she’s quick to attest to its “lifting” benefit. “Normally, everything starts to go down, but that goes up. I had to give all my skirts to the seamstress, and she had to add five centimeters. That’s a lot.”