I've always said that, growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident.
As I live my normal life, I hope to find something that click starts a thought, and then something totally unrelated would arise, and then maybe a third unconnected element would come from nowhere.
Many parts of the media have created the situation where uninteresting fashion can thrive.
If you have total freedom to design, you won't get anything interesting. So I give myself restraints in order to kind of push myself through, to create something new. It's the torture that I give myself, the pain and the struggle that I go through.
I am always thinking that some interesting possibility, some accidental synergy, could occur in a collaboration, and people seem to like it.
Growing up in postwar Japan has made me the person I am, but it is not why I do the work I do. It is a very personal thing - everything comes from inside.
