“I don’t wear a lot of color. In fact, I don’t actually like color on myself. I love color but it’s very challenging, it’s very powerful, it can overpower you. I think if my eyes were closed and someone put a red jacket on me, I would be able to feel that it was red. I don’t feel great in color.”

In another life I would love to be a cosmetic surgeon because it’s architectural. You know, you are trying to figure out where the seams go. Can I do it in one piece like Halston? Can you formaldehyde DNA?

I find I can get so much done between midnight and 4 a.m. Everything is quiet, no one is disturbing me, and if I go to bed then, I just lie awake thinking of ideas. They are very creative hours for me. One night a week I crash out, though.

I’m living the exact life I planned on living when I was five.

A man should never wear shorts in the city. Flip-flops and shorts in the city are never appropriate. Shorts should only be worn on the tennis court or on the beach.

Everyday is one less day.

Style is very different from fashion. Once you find something that works, keep it.

I want to make beautiful clothes for women and men who appreciate detail and quality. The product must be the best but this is almost secondary to the service the customer will receive.

I am not a person who is about reality. I am about enhanced reality.

I think people are sick of trends changing every six months – not because we’re tired of them, but just for the sake of change. There is so much junk in the world: junk TV, junk movies, all those junk magazines with the same people on the cover.

From the time we’re born until we die, we’re kept busy with artificial stuff that isn’t important.

You should put on the best version of yourself when you go out in the world because that is a show of respect to the other people around you.

The Gucci woman – you know what she’s after. The Saint Laurent woman – she’s going to torture you a little bit. You might have sex, but she will drip a little hot wax on you first.

You have to be passionate, you have to be engaged and you have to be contributing to the world.

Never, ever, ever wear anything you are uncomfortable in. Because that is what you’ll project: ‘I look like a fool.’

I’m very direct. I don’t have tantrums. I don’t yell or shout. I do expect an awful lot from my staff, but no more than I expect of myself.

I probably do have an obsessive personality, but striving for perfection has served me well

Contentment is for cows; a challenging purpose is for people.

Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we’ll do, to press forward when we are tired or hurt or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain.

First, say to yourself, ‘I’m totally independent of the good or bad opinions of others.’ Second: ‘I’m beneath no one.’ Third: ‘I’m fearless in the face of any and all challenges.’

There are no laurels in life, just new challenges.

When people are convinced you want something FOR them rather than something FROM them, they are less likely to be offended when you challenge them.

Leadership is all about taking people on a journey. The challenge is that most of the time, we are asking people to follow us to places we ourselves have never been.

There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.

Climate change should be seen as the greatest challenge to face man and treated as a much bigger priority in the United Kingdom.