No more rules, the freedom of dressing. The beauty of mixing vintage clothes with a pair of jeans that I love.

What is wonderful about my art is that dream and reality can become one. There is just one step between the two.

I'd really like to be in closer contact with life. I'm a little too distant, I guess. I like to place myself outside.

Finding your own style is not easy, but once found it brings complete happiness. It gives you self-confidence, always.

I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.

I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times.

I have always believed that fashion was not only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence.

Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful.

Basic clothes are for all women, to last for decades and decades. They are the future and will never change. I am persuaded of that.

If men wanted to look good in a skirt, they would need the body of an African. And the colour. A skirt with white, skinny legs. Horrible!

I love women. I love all the bright and attractive people and things of this world, the flame and also the moth, the dancer and the dance.

When I look at the five thousand garments and then all this music hall work, I ask myself how I could have done it all. I was a phenomenon!

I don't like [to] make a woman ... an abstract concept of the fashion. I don't like [to] say, "You must wear that." ... I am not a dictator.

I want to thank all the women who have worn my clothes, the famous and the unknown, who have been so faithful to me and given me so much joy.

I always believed that style was more important than fashion. They are rare, those who imposed their style while fashion makers are so numerous.

I like to watch the way a model moves in my clothes, the way she gives them life, or if they are wrong, stillborn, the way her life rejects them.

The big difference between couture and ready-to-wear is not design. It is the fabrics, the handwork, and the fittings. The act of creation is the same.

I wanted women to have the same basic wardrobe as a man. Blazer, trousers, and suit. They're so functional. I believed women wanted this and was right.

There are women who have completely transformed my view of fashion and if I hadn't shown them I would never have arrived at this point in fashion, you see.

A woman's wardrobe shouldn't change every six months. You should be able to use the pieces you already own and add to them. Because they are like timeless classics.

The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves. But for those who haven't had the fortune of finding this happiness, I am there.

I had noticed men were much more confident in their clothes. So I sought through trouser suits, trench coats, tuxedos, and pea coats to give women the same confidence.

I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting but whatever it's worth I did it.

I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one must preserve its dignity as clothing.

Le plus beau vêtement qui puisse habiller une femme, ce sont les bras de l'homme qu'elle aime. Mais, pour celles qui n'ont pas eu la chance de trouver ce bonheur, je suis là.

I live in solitude. I have need of solitude to do the next day's work. I can't be to parties where the noise tires me. I can't speak on the telephone. I must have complete calm.

For a woman, le smoking is an indispensable garment with which she finds herself continually in fashion, because it is about style, not fashion. Fashions come and go, but style is forever.

Dressing is a way of life. It brings you joy. It can give you freedom and liberation, help you to find yourself and to move without restraint. Isn't elegance forgetting what one is wearing?

I couldn't love a woman who inspired me to be totally disinterested. 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.

When I was young in the 1960s, all the world watched the youth. Everywhere was the sensation of wanting to break the chains but to do something beautiful. It is my privilege to have beauty always near me.

A designer who is not also a couturier, who hasn't learned the most refined mysteries of physically creating his models, is like a sculptor who gives his drawings to another man, an artisan, to accomplish.

I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.

I tried to show that fashion is an art. For that, I followed the counsel of my master Christian Dior and the imperishable lesson of Mademoiselle Chanel. I created for my era and I tried to foresee what tomorrow would be.

My classmates could see I was not similar. So they made me their scapegoat. They hit me or locked me in the toilets. During the break, I would take refuge in the chapel, or I would arrange to stay alone in the classroom.

Haute couture consists of secrets whispered from generation to generation, If, in ready-to-wear, a garment is manufactured according to standard sizes, the haute couture garment adapts to any imperfection in order to eliminate it.

I find men's clothing fascinating because sometime between, say, 1930 and 1936 a handful of basic shapes were created and still prevail as a sort of scale of expression, with which every man can project his own personality and his own dignity.

Fashions pass quickly, and nothing is more pathetic than those puppets of fashion outrageously made up one day, pale the next, pleated or ironed stiff, libertine or ascetic. Playing with fashion is an art. The first rule is don't burn your wings.

I want to give haute couture a kind of wink, a sense of humour - to introduce the whole sense of freedom one sees in the street into high fashion; to give couture the same provocative and arrogant look as punk - but, of course, with luxury and dignity and style.

I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won't come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me--a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.

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