Every collection reflects the ideas andvalues and interests of the individual or group who developed the collection.
Curation is everything.
I learned little by little. I learned how to draw. I learned how to tell the difference in the quality of fabrics - the subtle differences. I started with collections for men. So my first collection for women was deeply inspired by male roles.
In addition to being a writer, I'm a librarian - professionally trained and everything.
Librarians are awesome; I don't care who knows it.
[Librarians] study their field with as much determination and as much delight as open-heart surgeons.
I was a librarian.
Librarianship is a form of heroism. It’s just not as flashy as swords and dragons.
A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.
I am a completely different person when I am working on different collections.
To create a collection, you need a narrative - an explanation to tell the team.
The thing about Parsons compared to the other schools is that it really teaches you how to be a designer, whereas some of the other schools teach you to sketch or teach you the technical skills. But the curriculum at Parsons when I was there was how do you put a collection together, as well as all the technical stuff. It's the best training.
I can tell you every element of every single look from each collection - one to 30 - without looking at a picture: my label is all done by me.
When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books.
In the last century, I earned my living as a librarian, and I loved it. I'd have to take some classes to get up to speed with 21st-century librarianship.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
I would just sketch everything that was being made for the collections.
I can be working on a collection and a film at the same time. It can take a lot out of me, but the processes come from the same source. From a brief I set myself I can make a film, I can make a collection, I can make an installation.
Dolce & Gabbana is like our child. The editing of a collection before a show is a tough call, as we would like to show everything!
The library world is set up on this model where the library is a physical building and has a number of books and serves a geographical community.
Librarians in America do something like a couple of billion dollars worth of book business every year.
A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.
It's a real luxury to have a studio all to myself, somewhere to start mood boards for the next collection.
For some 25 years, I worked as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library, then at Trenton State College in New Jersey. My life has always been with, around, and for books.
I wanted to be a librarian.
