There are two kinds of designers: ones who are very happy locked in their office surrounded by their coterie. The last thing they need to do is to go to a trunk show; they'd go running for the hills. I not only enjoy it, I think, how do you design things that are applicable to life - unless you live it?
I don't like the idea that the first preparation when you start to design your building has to put your label. I think this is not fair. It's not fair to the building or to the people, to the client, because every building tells a different story.
Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.
Always beware an unsigned architectural design.
That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.
I never was interested in being part of the fashion world - I just wanted to design shoes. I didn't even know 'Vogue' existed when I was growing up. 'Vogue,' what is that?'
Real web designers write code. Always have, always will.
Design works if it's authentic, inspired, and has a clear point of view. It can't be a collection of input.
When something's made in the smallest volume - as a one-off couture piece - or in large quantities, deep care is critical to determine authentic, successful design and, ultimately, manufacture.
I don't know if that's new, but it has become very official over the past 25 or 30 years - and today it's probably at its most extreme point, where sometimes collections look more like a stylist's work than a designer's signature.
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.
I think what makes me different is that... I am comfortable with expressing my vulnerability. I think designers often want to just put the loveable ideas out there. Ones that are imaginative but not very introspective. It is more rare for a designer to explore his or her disappointments and moments of disillusion and doubt.
Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt.
It's kind of hard when your moniker is "bridal" and "evening" for people to understand that I don't run around in a bridal gown all day, nor do I run around in an evening gown. I run around in clothes that resonate for me. I wanted to do those clothes in my ready-to-wear collection - because I don't know how you can be a woman designing for other women and not relate it back to yourself.
I don't like menswear that's too tricky, and I wanted to take a lot of inspiration from myself and really only do things that I like. I don't like chinos, but I do like dress pants and jeans, so we do them. It's pretty straightforward, and just a matter of doing the right products.
I always find the more you can draw on real life characters, people, situations, it works better. Certainly for designing a character, I prefer to draw on real people rather than other guys I've seen in movies, rather than 'here's my version of Clint Eastwood' or whoever.
I'm very interested in buildings that have meaning for a particular place. I suppose it feels slightly rude to me if the imposed style that lands in a place is almost stronger than the place. For me it's about inventing a solution for each place; if people then want to know who did it, then great.
The Bauhaus fights imitation, inferior craftsmanship and artistic dilettantism
