Like her supermodel peers, Stephanie Seymour has always shown a real love for fashion. Throughout her career, she’s been in creative collaborations that led to iconic images fit for fashion history – think Azzedine Alaïa or Richard Avedon, for example.

It’s no surprise then that design piques her interest, and now, she is exploring this with Raven & Sparrow, the bespoke lingerie collection launching at Barneys New York this evening.

“I have always loved lingerie,” Seymour says. “Lingerie has its place in fashion and I believe it’s a partially lost art that I would like to bring back. Diana Vreeland had a little lingerie line at beginning of her fashion career. I feel like that gave me permission.”

Seymour wanted to resurrect the art of dressing for bed at a time when T-Shirts and boxers are more common bedtime choices.

The name for the line was initially inspired by Dolly Parton’s song Little Sparrow. She was looking for ways to incorporate the word “sparrow” into the brand even as people encouraged her to use her own name. “I wanted to create a brand,” she recalls. “This is not a celebrity line. I work with very good designers, who have a lot to do with what I am doing. I didn’t want to put my name out there and not theirs.”

Seymour decided on Raven & Sparrow, because “every woman has a little bit of Raven and a little bit of sparrow in her. Raven is her sexy, mysterious side, and the sparrow is all polka dots and bows.”

She cites her personal vintage couture and lingerie collections as a source of inspiration and knowledge.

“You have to know your history to do it right in the present,” she says. “[Raven & Sparrow is] sexy but modest. I wouldn’t answer the door in it, but I am fine if my kids jumped into bed with me when I am wearing Raven & Sparrow. It’s not racy or overly sexual. I started it because I thought there was a real need for this aesthetic. I had the desire to design something.”

She describes the target customer as “every woman. That’s why I loved naming it Raven & Sparrow. I tried to think about all different body types. What would she like to sleep or lounge in?”

Don’t expect Seymour to extend the line into a full fashion collection, though.

“I could never do that. For me, that would be like insulting all the great designers I worship, and I could never compete with them,” she says. “I don’t have that kind of skill. Lingerie doesn’t need construction or horsehair. These are dresses to wear to bed. I’d like to do a corset with Azzedine perhaps, or something with Jason Wu…something fun that can border on fashion.”

Asked which designers she admires and is inspired by the most, Seymour didn’t have to think twice. “I have to say Azzedine, because he pushes me to be my very best,” she says.

Alaïa, in fact, will help curate her couture dresses for a show she and her husband, Peter Brant, are planning at the end of this year at The Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut. It will feature portraits of her and the art she has collected over the years, as well as pieces from her couture closet, including the wedding dress Alaïa made for her, and dresses from many of the designers she has worked with.

With more than three decades of experience, Seymour has some advice for aspiring and emerging models.

“I simply believe that everybody is different, and that it’s very sexy to have your own figure and not look like everybody else,” she says. “What makes a woman sexy and original is that she is sexy and original— and not starving herself because she needs to be a size 36. If you are a 40 or a 42, wear it with confidence.

“When Jean Paul Gaultier wanted me for one of his Hermes shows, not one thing fit me,” she remembers. “At the end of fitting, my leather top burst open. He took my measurements, and he made a little Pocahontas bra top with fringe and long suede pants, because he wanted me in show. I was so discouraged because I burst this top open, but he said, “Don’t worry.” At the end of the day, it’s important for girls who want to be or are models to be originals and not like anyone else. For me, that’s feminine and beautiful.”