Design is not for philosophy it's for life.
Issey Miyake
The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse.
Everything is an experiment.
Clothing has been called intimate architecture. We want to go beyond that.
We yearn for the beautiful, the unknown, and the mysterious.
Even when I work with computers, with high technology, I always try to put in the touch of the hand.
I do not create a fashionable aesthetic... I create a style based on life.
I love to be free to explore, research, and evolve.
Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process.
My fascination has been the space between cloth and the body, and using a two-dimensional element to clothe a three-dimensional form.
I've never been involved in any kind of political movement.
I am not sentimental about the past. I like to think about what is next.
In Paris, we call the people who make clothing 'couturiers' - they develop new clothing items - but actually, the work of designing is to make something that works in real life.
You see it in the many bouncing clothes that are not just pleats. To make them, two or three people twist them - twist, twist, twist the pleats, sometimes three or four persons twist together and put it all in the machine to cook it.
Boys have been wearing skirts for some time now. My three assistants wear mini skirts. They come to work on their motorcycles wearing mini skirts. The French saw the idea on the streets and have done it in better fabrics, and now everyone says, 'Ah!'
The core spirit of Pleats Please is joy, and what better emotion to wear on your skin every day?
One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else.
Frank Gehry not only understood my sense of fun and adventure but also reciprocated it and translated that feeling into his work.
In fashion, you need to present something new every six months, but it takes time to study things. Development is very important.
My design is no design.
I try to be free. The women also must be free.
We can also cut by heat - heat punch. And we also can cut by cold - extreme cold. When you cut with heat, it makes a mark. With cold, no mark. It depends on the fabric.
In the Eighties, Japanese fashion designers brought a new type of creativity; they brought something Europe didn't have. There was a bit of a shock effect, but it probably helped the Europeans wake up to a new value.
Paul Poiret did wonderful things because he was so influenced by motifs, but Vionnet really understood the kimono and took the geometric idea to construct her clothes - and that brought such freedom into European clothes in the 1920s.
Designers must be increasingly sensitive to our Earth's dwindling resources. It is our responsibility.
Paris is an old and traditional place; it needs new blood.
I am neither a writer nor a theorist. For a person who creates things to utter too many words means to regulate himself - a frightening prospect.
I like women who have their own idea of life: the woman who is assured, comfortable with herself, strong inside, proud of herself - not in an arrogant way, not showing off.
I respect men and women who age and are proud and don't lose energy. I think fashion forgot those people.
The joining of the Japanese with the French should make a new movement. I think it should be good for Paris.
A-POC respects that there is a fine balance between the value of the human touch, which can be called artisanal, and the abilities of technology. I like to think of it as poesy and technology.
I believe that all forms of creativity are related.
The combination of human skills with technology will always be at the root of any solution to the future of making clothes.
Clothes should fit comfortably - not too tightly - so that you have space to move in and think freely.
I was always interested in making clothing that is worn by people in the real world.
I'd rather look to the future than to the past.
A few of the influences on my career so far have been Isamu Noguchi, Irving Penn, and seeing the riots of 1968 in Paris.
With imagination and personal creativity, people who sew can design the way they look to suit themselves.
Think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy.
By the way, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14.
My touchstone started out being - and is still - exploring the ways by which to make clothing from a single piece of cloth.
I started to work with cotton fabrics. I used cotton because it's easy to work with, to wash, to take care of, to wear if it's warm or cold. It's great. That was the start.
Many people will say, well, clothes should be worn; but I think people can look at them in public, like seeing a film. I think museum exhibitions are very important.
Design is a vital component to the enrichment of our everyday lives. Japan has a very rich history and culture of design, and I feel it is a very important dialogue to open and keep evolving.
From the beginning I thought about working with the body in movement, the space between the body and clothes. I wanted the clothes to move when people moved. The clothes are also for people to dance or laugh.
I sent 200, 300 of the clothes that I had made, and the dancers chose what they liked.
All of my work stems from the simplest of ideas that go back to the earliest civilizations: making clothing from one piece of cloth. It is my touchstone.
When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape - I remember it all.
I am not really interested in clothing as a conceptual art form.
Architects always have a feel for time - the generation they live in - as we do, and they are always striving toward boundless adventure.
