In the past, art was admired and revered from afar. Today, there is more of an interactive relationship between the art and the person who admires it.
Architects always have a feel for time - the generation they live in - as we do, and they are always striving toward boundless adventure.
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.
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!'
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 did not want to be labelled 'the designer who survived the atomic bomb,' and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima.
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.
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.
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.
Clothing is the closest thing to all humans.
If you look back throughout history from the ancient Egyptians onwards, most cultures started making clothing from a very basic premise: a single piece of cloth.
My touchstone started out being - and is still - exploring the ways by which to make clothing from a single piece of cloth.
My fascination has been the space between cloth and the body, and using a two-dimensional element to clothe a three-dimensional form.
Men have been buying my women's coats for years.
Clothes should fit comfortably - not too tightly - so that you have space to move in and think freely.
I am not really interested in clothing as a conceptual art form.
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.
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.
Most of us feel some kind of uncertainty, with the population increasing and resources decreasing. We have to face these issues.
The future of fashion is light, durable clothes.
