ETC: Only in New York kids, there’s music appreciation for babies?

KK: Yes, six months to 12 months. It is incredible to watch them react to the instruments and the sounds.

ETC: So rarified, is that what it was like for you growing up?

KK: I grew up with nothing but my imagination, you know, playing with sticks and stones in our yard. That’s another thing that changed when I had Lukas. I used to think kids today were given too much but, then, when I went to this class I thought, my goodness, if I had been given music appreciation I might be playing the piano.

ETC: Has becoming a mother changed in any way how you dress or your interest level in fashion?

KK: I am always interested in “fashion.” I shoot it for magazines, so I need to know what’s going on. During Fashion Week in New York, I went to several shows. But I don’t think my style has changed particularly since the baby.

ETC: What are you wearing today?

KK: A Prada leather motorcycle-type jacket, skinny black J Brand jeans, a flannel shirt and black boots.

ETC: Is any of that new this fall?

KK: The Prada jacket.

ETC: Horse is your fifth book if you include Pools published first in 1992 by Knopf and then re-released in 2007 by Rizzoli. After Pools came Underworld in 1998 about underwear, then Cross in 2000. Given your lifelong love of horses and riding I am surprised Horse wasn’t your first book.

KK: It’s true that I have been asked to do a book on horses for years, but I wanted to find the right way to do the book, and I hope I have. Most of the books on horses I know of are too romantic. But for me, the horse is so much more. The animal represents power, majesty, fragility … there is almost a human quality. And when times become so problematic as they are now with the economy in crisis and so much else, the horse is also an enduring archetype, a very powerful icon of another time. So with Horse what I’ve done is mix vintage photography with fashion with sport and still lives. It is the way I like to do my books, celebrating photography as much as celebrating the subject.

ETC: Are you traveling this fall to promote the book?

KK: I’m doing a signing on November 22 at Glenn Horowitz in East Hampton, then on December 3rd at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach, and in Dallas, on December 11, at Forty Five Ten, a great store there.

ETC: Do you know what your next book will be about?

KK: It is supposed to be a sequel to Pools with all new images for 2010.

ETC: Supposed to be?

KK: (Laughing) Uh-huh. Supposed to be. We’ll see.

ETC: Kelly, one of your best friends is your ex-husband Calvin. You are in constant contact with him, and his daughter Marci. How did that happen? Do you have any advice for ex-wives?

KK: This is the person you married and spent so many years with, and anything but continuing to be friends … I mean the people you see who still hate each other after all that, it is horribly sad. Maybe it is hard at first, but it is worth it, if you can appreciate the good, if you can become friends again, well, this man knows you so very well, and you truly can be best friends.

ETC: Easier said than done?

KK: You have to want it. Calvin and I were lucky our split was mutual so no one was super hurt. Remember what you liked in that person, and if you can still find and like those qualities, then focus on that. Otherwise, all that negative energy, as negativity about anything does, brings bad stuff. And life is already tough enough. Why make it any harder?