Fabric Manipulation Quotes

After months of preparation working with a stylist who explained to me how a fashion house runs and the process of making a dress, I developed a respect for the patience and skill it takes to design these dresses.

I need human feelings to fit garments. I couldn't do it just, like, on an object - it's too close to our body. It's like a skin you are making, so you need one's feelings to make a garment.

People don't necessarily realise that there can be just as much work on a quiet jacket as an overblown gown.

Even before I was discovered in 1966, I used to make my own clothes. I learned how to sew early on, and it's still my passion now. I constantly have ideas in my head about clothes so jumped at the chance to do my own collection and am very hands-on. Everything I design, I wear and I love.

Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.

I've designed since I was 12. The first was when I skated to Carmen, in red and gold and black. I wanted so many frills at that time. It had a lot going on for a little person like me. And I picked out fabrics that didn't stretch. Very uncomfortable.

Carrying 200 pounds of velvet and satin around a stage for 90 minutes - that's man's work, let me tell you.

The kimono, haori, and girdle, and even the long hanging sleeves, have only parallel seams, and these are only tacked or basted, as the garments, when washed, are taken to pieces, and each piece, after being very slightly stiffened, is stretched upon a board to dry.

Very few designers today design - it's very important to be able to do your own sketch on paper and then explain [your vision] to the fabric cutters. Instead, lots of designers drape - it's the new way.

The most significant pieces for me are the ones that come from my drapings. It's emotional because they are created by my hand and then become a collaborative process in the atelier.

I did make a lot of my own clothes. I used to love to sew, so I made my own shirts and bell bottoms and modified my own clothes, which is what we did during the punk period.

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

If you take away print and embroidery, you have to challenge yourself a bit more on the cut.

There's an art to making something look good when, on a hanger, it's just a black coat.

My passion is really candy, but I know that I can use art and fashion as inspiration.

I'm known for color and prints and embroideries.

Making clothes involves what I like...color, pattern, shape and movement...I like the everyday process...the people, the pressure, the surprise of seeing the work come alive walking and dancing around on strangers. Like red lipstick on the mouth, my products wake up and brighten and bring the wearer to life...drawing attention to her beauty and specialness...her moods and movements...her dreams and fantasies.

All of my work stems from the simplest of ideas that go back to the earliest civilizations: making clothing from one piece of cloth. It is my touchstone.

A lot of fashion might seem boring, but it is actually quite fun: the inside, the outside, the silhouette... All the different finishes. That's a skill.

I've got a real sense of three-dimensional geometry. I can look at a flat piece of fabric and know that if I put a slit in it and make some fabric travel around a square, then when you lift it up it will drape in a certain way, and I can feel how that will happen.

I love draping; it's less about proportion than fit and the fabric. It's very specialized and I think when women see the construction, they respond to it immediately.

My fascination has been the space between cloth and the body, and using a two-dimensional element to clothe a three-dimensional form.

I've used a lot of jersey, but I've also done a lot of complex pattern weaves in these fabrics in solid colors, and there are lots of little dresses for cocktail and evening. I've done a series of very important evening dresses as well, just to show that these two ideas can also work well together. Today's woman can wear an important evening dress or a simple pant and top. It's all in the personality of the woman.

I knew from my youngest age I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was always draping fabric and working with color palettes.

Halston was one of the hardest-working designers I have come across. The way he cut, moulded, manipulated and draped fabric was inspiring. I was submerged into the Halston subculture alongside Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor and Truman Capote. They shaped who I have become as a designer.