There is always an emotional element to anything that you make. I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle. It’s hard to balance everything. It’s always challenging. My relationships with producers or photographers – these are relationships that took years. I can’t get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it’s just crass. My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor. Vanity is the healthiest thing in life. I believe that my clothes can give people a better image of themselves – that it can increase their feelings of confidence and happiness. You can hide so much behind theatrics, and I don’t need to do that any more. I don’t really know how to do casual clothes.
Breaking Up With Fast Fashion Has Been Easier
I’m a fashion designer and people think, what do I know? We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great. Success isn’t about the end result, it’s about what you learn along the way. I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.
“I try as much as possible to give you a great basic product and what comes out, I feel, is really amazing.”
Kelly Johnson
If I fell in love with a woman for an artistic reason, or from the point of view of my work, I think it would rob her of something. We live in an era of globalization and the era of the woman. Never in the history of the world have women been more in control of their destiny. I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction. Being one step ahead of a fashion trend is not so important to me. What matters is to always forge ahead. I’d like to believe that the women who wear my clothes are not dressing for other people, that they’re wearing what they like and what suits them. It’s not a status thing. Design is a series of creative choices – it’s a collaborative effort, an evolutionary process. You choose your fabrics depending upon what you want to say, then you work with mills to get those fabrics. Through the process, you realize what you want it to be.