#designer

"Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests"

"A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul"

"For me, Chanel is like music. There are certain notes and you have to make another tune with them"

"Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress."

"I want everyone to wear what they want and mix it in their own way. That, to me, is what is modern."

"I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon."

"Fashion and music are the same, because music express its period too."

"Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step."

"We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both."

"Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore – and then you get something out of her"

"The elegance is as physical, as moral quality that has nothing common with the clothing. You can see a countrywoman more elegant than one so called elegant woman."

"Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality."

"Fashion is about two things: the evolution and the opposite."

"I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, ‘It’s impolite; remove your glasses.’ I said, ‘Do I ask you to remove your bra?"

"When people want to be liked for what they did, they should stop."

"The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children."

"Fashion is about going ahead, not about memory."

"Success nullifies. You then have to do it again, preferably differently"

"People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory."

"I do my job like I breathe — so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble."