Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We are actually starting to manipulate our bodies, because we can, into a shape. We are becoming our own art. But what happens for me is that it desexualizes everything. You know, you start to look more and more polished, more and more lacquered and you look like a beautiful car. Does anyone want to sleep with you? Does anyone want to touch you? Does anyone want to kiss you? Maybe not, because you're too scary.
The thing about eyewear is that it is so potent, There are very few accessories that, if you were not wearing anything, if you put on they would date you to a whole era. You could look the Thirties, the Fifties, and the Nineties just by your eyewear. It's like a pair of shoes because it is sculptural. It exists without a face. It tells a lot about where you are architecturally or aesthetically in a particular period in time.
This is something I realized after stepping away from women's fashion for the last five years. When you are inside, it is such a tiny group of people who think that this is the most important thing in the world. But when you get a little bit of distance, someone will say to you something like, "Don't you think that shoe is blah?" And I will be like, "What shoe? I don't know what you're talking about." It is very, very inside.
I went through some tough times because if you're used to having a voice in contemporary culture and all of sudden, you don't have that voice, you don't have that outlet. I didn't appreciate that. I didn't understand how important that was to me. And all of a sudden, after investing all this time and energy, I had no identity. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I had to say. I didn't have a way to say it. It was very painful.
Right now everything is pumped up. Cars look like someone took an air pump and pumped them up. They look engorged. Lips pumped up, breasts pumped up, everything is pumped up. And it's also kind of off-putting. It's sexual but in such a hard way that it's, for me, not sexual at all. Whereas the 1970s, breasts were smaller. People were not wearing bras. Farrah Fawcett's sexuality and sensuality was a very touchable sexuality. She was kissable. She was friendly.
I was lucky enough to have had great success early on in life; to have had all the things the material world can offer. And yet, I realized that what I had actually neglected was the more spiritual side of myself, which has always been there. But it's easy for us in our culture to become consumed in a sense by materialism. Now materialism is fine. We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. But, in our culture, we're never happy.
We do objectify women in our culture. We're starting to objectify men a little bit more. And there is nothing wrong with that. Objectify maybe is the wrong word. Celebrate their bodies and use beautiful men, beautiful women as a tool to get your attention and to sell things. But no-one - we're very, very uncomfortable in our culture with looking at a naked man. You know, naked women are everywhere, selling everything. And again, this is quite sexist. But naked men make us nervous.
A beautiful woman in our culture, and I would like to say, you know, this was different in 1962, but it still exists today - I know a lot of these women -treats different in a different way; meaning that if you're a beautiful woman, you're incredibly powerful within our culture. The world operates differently for you. Then, at a moment in time, and it has nothing to do with you, it's like the carpet is just ripped out from under you, and the way that you've operated in the world no longer works.
I love New York. It's given me so much as a designer. When I moved here, I wanted to tap into the glamour of the city immediately. More than anywhere else, New York offers itself up - you arrive and get a rush in a flash. It's dazzling. Everywhere you look, there is decoration, from a pair of jewel-encrusted shoes in the window in Bergdorf Goodman to the Chrysler Building. And New York is incredibly democratic. Everyone is packed into this tiny space. You are confronted with all manner of people, and I love that.
I don't understand all these breasts right now, and they don't look like breasts. They look like someone's taken a grapefruit half and inserted it under your skin. I mean it's - it doesn't even bear any resemblance to what a natural breast looks like. But we're starting to think that this is what women should like. And young girls are looking at these breasts and thinking, oh, I need to go have my breasts done because they've lost touch with what a real breast actually looks like. I find it fascinating, I find it disturbing.
I think that something that people in general forget to do - and it's true, not everyone has the financial means to do this - whatever clothes you buy if you really want them to fit well, you need to have them altered or tailored. And whether you're doing that yourself, whether you're taking it to your drycleaner that has a tailor, you need to alter and tailor everything, whether it's expensive, whether it's, you know, whether it's inexpensive. If you want it to really fit your body, even the best clothes have to be tailored.
If you are a designer, sometimes it is better not to delegate, because someone pays money for something that you designed, so it should be exactly the way you want it, exactly the way you would have chosen it. People call me a control freak, and I say, "Well, my name is on the shoe." It means the heel needs to be the way I want it and not the way somebody else wants it, and the toe needs to be exactly the way I want it, and the fabric and the material have to be exactly the way I want it. It is not a democracy - it is a dictatorship.
If we're having a glitzy over-the-top moment, fashion is very glitzy and over-the-top, you know, over-the-top. If we're having a moment where things are, you know, we're in a recession, fashion becomes quiet. So, in terms of popular culture, fashion and especially women's fashion is incredibly interesting, aside from satisfying just a particular need to create and arrange things in a way that one sees as beautiful. And so, in a certain way, it's fulfilling. In another way, it's very fleeting because it doesn't last very long. You know, a beautiful moment in fashion goes away very quickly.
