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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
