Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Through my ongoing work as a UNAIDS Ambassador and with the End AIDS Coalition, I remain personally committed to aligning resources and galvanizing global action and working with amfAR to make AIDS history.
I am the closest of all to my wife, who is in and of herself a change agent and has committed to impacting the realities of homelessness - and making sure I get out of the house every day to do what I have to do.
There are only so many things we can do that make us feel better. We pick up the newspapers and we want to cry every day. We turn on the news and we want to jump out the first window, jump in front of the first truck.
I think designers are starting to realize that we're all in the same industry. We're making clothes - we aren't saving the world. I'm not saying that designers aren't artists, but at the end of the day, we make clothes.
I'm always fetishizing the French woman and French taste and style. My assistant will make fun of me because every time we're picking the direction of a collection, I say the same thing: 'I want it to be really French.'
It's hard to ignore the hand that feeds you, and today our communities are far more needy than they've ever been, and governments neither have the will nor the ability in many cases to provide the services that they need to.
When you look at women today, many take very good care of themselves - they exercise, they eat well, they achieve so much in their jobs. I think they feel good, they feel beautiful, and I believe they want to show their bodies.
Everybody struggles to find a balance between their personal lives and their professional lives, and in some cases, their connection with the community. So what I've looked to do over the years is marry as many of those as I can.
My mother has always encouraged me to do what I love. When I started being interested in fashion, she was very supportive, bringing me to see exhibits and buying me books. And when I started my company, she was right there to help me!
The best and the worst thing about fashion is that anyone can do it. But because fashion can be the most unintellectual thing, you have to turn it into an intellectual exercise just for your own sanity. You have to start with a conceit.
Starting your own business and thinking about how you can grow something and fulfill both expectations and needs of your retailers and still stay exciting for the runway, you sort of become this left brain-right brain person pretty quickly.
Asking people for money is a hard thing to do. But helping people do the right thing is not hard. So I often call people up and suggest ways they can spend their money to make a meaningful impact, and I don't feel I've asked them for money.
One of the guiding principles of Altuzarra is that fashion can be transformative, changing not just the way you look, but also the way you feel. By partnering with Target, we hope to bring that same experience to a much broader range of women.
Every day, we all make the critical decision of what we're going to wear, because many of the people we encounter in a day don't get to know anything more about us than how we present ourselves. That decision - totally on our own terms - is a powerful one.
I think women want to feel beautiful. They want to feel seductive. I also try to think about items that can be worn in different ways so they can be worn more than once. If you're going to buy a $2,000 jacket, you are going to want to wear it over and over.
There's a side to me that likes to make clothes for everyday. But I also think of fashion as an escape. It's like a dream. Even in an economy that isn't strong and where it's important to sell clothes, you have to make things that let people dream a little.
I always believe that if you're looking at a magazine and I'm one of 40 ads, I - in effect - get one-fortieth of your attention. But if, when you close that magazine, you're still thinking about my ad, I've got a lot more than one-fortieth of your attention.
My job, I believe, is to convince you to allow me to be part of your brand. Then when you look to present yourself a certain way you'll come to me, go to our website, and you'll buy want you want in the color you want, in the size you want, for the season you want.
Over the years, I have found a way to use this business and this platform to talk with people about important issues. To the degree you can bring a sense of purpose to what you do, it makes the relationship with the customer that much more meaningful and purposeful.
You are being trained to be a Queen, but you do not have to act like one until y ou get your own hive. Being a Queen will not overtax you as you will never be called upon to use your mind on any major matter. You will use the National Mind, their mind. It's very restful.
I'm sure some people haven't necessarily embraced some of the messages over the years. We've been talking about the inappropriateness of automatic weapons and guns since the late Eighties. I know we've lost some customers over the years, and in some ways, secured others.
I've come to realize that, with social media today, people consume fashion very differently than they ever have before - they post it, tweet it, "like" it, retweet it. Today, people define themselves by a collection of various elements in their lives that they connect to.
Very early on in this journey, I uniquely found not just an aesthetic, but also a voice. I found the ability to communicate with people, which has turned out for me to be a far more meaningful platform. To talk to them about not just what's on their body, but also on their minds.
I had left the runway because I had come to believe that it was questionably relevant and appropriate, because we were creating clothes that, to a large degree, never ended up making it to the stores. And the runway was being seen in markets where those clothes weren't available.
When I was younger I would often go to nightclubs and sit in the best-lit corner to look at what people chose to wear, or I'd go out and around the city - to places where people express their sense of what they think looks good. So, I get a sense of that, and then I try to interpret it.
We're making clothes - we aren't saving the world. I'm not saying that designers aren't artists, but at the end of the day, we make clothes. Hopefully we make beautiful clothes with a message, but in the end it's for people to wear. I think that the hype of fashion has come down a level.
I was not a very popular kid in high school, and I had this idea that the way that I dressed would change how liked I was. It was that kind of Pygmalion story. I think, ultimately that's probably why I became interested in fashion, its transformative power, and how it can change your identity.
I don't know if I even consider myself a very political person. I have always had strong beliefs on important social issues. Politics have politicized social issues, but I don't know if social issues are in fact political. If anything, they are more human issues than they are political issues.
In the early years I had no real plan. I figured it out as I went, which is easier to do when you don't have a lot of staff and overhead. Back then I believed my job was just to create great-looking shoes. That wasn't true. I learned that the shoes needed to fit, be comfortable, and not fall apart.
I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.
For 30 years I have used my platform in provocative ways to encourage a healthy dialogue about important issues, including HIV/AIDS, war, and homelessness. I'm well aware of the risks that come with this approach, and if this encourages further awareness and discussion about critical issues then all-the-better.
I honestly think that with our generation - Alex Wang, Prabal Gurung, Jason Wu, Christian Cota, Robert Geller - there's a different expectation of what our behavior should be. People expect designers to be good businesspeople and PR people, and I don't think partying is a part of that persona the way it used to be.
My first AIDS campaign was in 1985. There was this dark cloud, everybody was socially inspired - we hadn't seen social consciousness like that since the '60s - but most people were talking about hunger in Africa. Nobody was talking about this really ominous circumstance here in the U.S. because of this fear of stigma.
I believe what has kept us relevant over the years is not just the fashion which has sometimes been more timely than other times but has also been our messages, which have consistently reflected the context of the world we're living in and what was happening and that which was affecting what we were thinking and what was inspiring us.
I was also very lucky to be able to work with talented people while I was learning. I didn't actually go to fashion school. I worked with Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy which was a really pivotal experience for me. He taught me a lot about being faithful to your own voice and to really believe in your own voice and that's made a big difference.
In the past, you needed extraordinary access in certain markets to communicate your message. Today you can get through to audiences on your own terms. Everybody curates their own program today, and they do it on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. They decide who they want to be their audience and who they want to have access to their platform.
What's so great about my business is that every day is different than the day prior. Today, the industry bears little resemblance to the one I joined 30 years ago, which is what's so exciting about it. But the one thing that hasn't changed is the notion that a successful business model is one that has the ability to respond positively to the unexpected shifts in the winds as they continue to present themselves.
Social media has totally transformed the way we communicate with each other and the way we provide for needs as we see them. I've always believed that if somebody looks good, they invariably are going to feel good. And it's self-fulfilling, because you'll just relax, you'll smile, you'll think you own the world. But if you also do good, you'll feel even better. So my goal is to make what we do meaningful in as many people's lives as we can.
There’s a side to me that likes to make clothes for everyday. But I also think of fashion as an escape. It’s like a dream. It shouldn’t always be practical and about real life. Sometimes you have to do a piece that has a bit more of a wow - almost like, "I don’t know who’s going to wear that. It’s almost too much." That’s a lot of what fashion is about. Even in an economy that isn’t strong and where it’s important to sell clothes, you have to make things that let people dream a little, you know?