“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.”

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 am no longer concerned with sensation and innovation, but with the perfection of my style.

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

I don’t at all search for an ideal woman, but several ideal women.

Seeing Cubism paintings at the Beaubourg makes me very happy and also old films.

I prefer to shock rather than to bore through repetition.

I love black because it affirms, designs and styles. A woman in a black dress is a pencil stroke.

The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.

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

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.

Fashion is like a party. Getting dressed is preparing to play a role.

To be beautiful, woman enough to have a black sweater, black skirt and walk arm in arm with the man she loves.

Anyone who reaches for great expression has to be careful of the ridiculous.

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.

A woman’s wardrobe shouldn’t change every six months.

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

There was a lot of playing going on, and the New Yorkers, of course, were a completely different crowd from what I’d known.

And let’s say in brief they live the Taliban style in Afghanistan, completely the same style.

Women want total freedom or rather – to call things by their names – total licence. If you allow them to achieve complete equality with men, do you think they will be easier to live with?

I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.

We older artists are competing with the new style of country, with their new modern style of gospel, with the young people.

There are women who have completely transformed my view of fashion.

When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.

It’s possible to be completely enlightened… except with your family.