Creative Mixing Quotes

The best DJs in the world know how to pull in music from all over the place and make it work as a cohesive whole.

I'm hugely inspired by the '60s and the '70s. I just love the music of that time and the overall freedom of that era. I love that the idea of clashing didn't really exist. You could mix prints on prints, you could mix fabrics and colors - and it was more about the way you felt than about the label and trends. That's something that I've always gravitated towards.

I feel like my art is very eclectic. I have taken my favorite things - be that costume designing, fashion sense, music and video editing - and I threw them all into one big clump. And that's what I do.

I take inspiration from books, movies, television, music - it all goes in the hopper. Depending on the project, I'm drawing from this or that piece of art that has stayed with me. Toni Morrison, George Romero, Sonic Youth - they are all in there.

I think that life has brought a lot to fashion, and fashion brings plenty to life. I took my children on photo shoots, at the same time, I borrowed my father's sweater for a photo shoot and, then, I am inspired by a Russian princess because of my Russian roots. Everything is all mixed in together.

I have found a groove and a combination between originals and mashups that I think works well.

My design philosophy has always been eclectic.

When I started, department stores were either very fashion, or very tailored, so the two never mixed. I mixed it, and they said you're too tailored for fashion and too fashion for tailoring. So I had to move the market. So that's what I did.

In the early part of the '70s, we had glam rock, but we also had reggae and ska happening at the same time. I just took all those influences I had as a kid and threw them together, and somehow it works.

One of the things I do well - I think, anyway - is combining different tones.

All of the genres are just blending now, which I think is another super-cool thing.

I love to mix everything together. It's really my way to see beauty.

This is a good thing, mixing culture to make something new, something no one has ever seen. This is kind of a new history.

That's definitely my goal, and always has been through the Universal Zulu Nation, is to show that music breaks down all that foolishness and can bring all types of people together, especially when you can mix it and shape it. That's the beauty of sampling: taking the old sound and recreating it and making something new, or bringing back the old sounds, mixed with some heavy grooves and beats, so people can remember. "Oh, I remember that, back in the day."

What could be a better recipe than mixing fashion and food?

We like to combine genres. Theo grew up listening to punk, and I love Christina Aguilera.