ANN DEMEULEMEESTER

Beauty of mind creates freedom. Freedom of mind creates beauty.

I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.

As a young girl, I dreamed of having a voice in fashion.

I am just a Flemish girl with her feet on the ground.

I can make 10 jackets of the same colour, same two pockets and same length, that will look like 10 completely different jackets when you put them on. It's about the way they are cut - it makes them look and feel completely different and move differently, and that's a never-ending study. People who wear my clothes will know exactly what I mean.

It's too easy to say that orange is happy and black is sad. To me, black is perfect. You can fill it with the emotion you want to express.

When you see or hear something beautiful, it's like that thing is transmitting a kind of energy, and if that energy helped create the work, the only thing I can do is play it when I finally show the work.

I've always done things my way.

I need human feelings to fit garments. I couldn't do it just, like, on an object - it's too close to our body. It's like a skin you are making, so you need one's feelings to make a garment.

The future is open, and I never make plans. As long as it's interesting to me, I try to live my life to the fullest.

My work has always been about authentic feeling, and I think we live in a time where we need that.

It's most beautiful thing about my work. I have reached people who I would never have known without my work.

I feel more European than Belgian. However I do think that my Flemish roots have an impact on my character and culture.

Fashion is silly. Perhaps I should say fashion in general is silly. But then everything is, in general. If you talk about music in general, it's silly; about magazines, in general, they're silly.

I'm not confused about what's happening in fashion, because I follow my own direction and go.

Creating is a lonely thing in a lot of ways.

Good fashion is like rock music: all anarchy and revolt.

I don't look at other people's work because I don't want to be distracted by their ideas.

Ann Demeulemeester is an adult brand now, with its own identity and legacy that is able to continue growing without me.

For me, Gothic is something from my youth, when I had a heavy metal phase.

I had to find my own language in jewelry. That was important to me; it really had to be what I would love to have myself.

Jewelry is something that has to do with emotion. That aspect of jewelry really interests me.

Things aren't interesting if you level them. It's the voice that's interesting.

What I like to wear, I do myself. I don't know how that sounds, but it's the truth. My life is so mixed with my profession that I don't know where I begin or my work ends.

I'm very aware of the influence I've had, and I'm very pleased with that, because it proves that my work was necessary, that people liked it, and that it was right for its time which is a big compliment. But of course, this means I now have to move on. If more people are doing what I'm doing, I have to evolve. I'm pushed toward a new direction, and I have to let myself be tempted, find out where I can go.