DRIES VAN NOTEN

When we were studying at the Royal Antwerp Academy, we were taught to seek inspiration from everyone, everything and everywhere. My parents and grandparents were also a great inspiration for me a very young age.

I don't design for myself. I design something keeping in mind that it has to please a lot of women.

Clothes is just something you put on to cover yourself... fashion is a way to communicate.

I make clothes people can wear; I don't make art.

For me personally, there's too much fashion around in this world.

I prefer a scruffy atmosphere.

I prefer ugly things. I prefer things which are surprising.

One of the big luxuries of being in Antwerp is that I can easily walk in the city. In Paris and New York, I am more recognized.

I like it when you have something happening by coincidence. Just something in a book is enough. But I prefer a fragment of an image so you are far more free to bring in elements of your own.

I like to choose my own way forward. I really do want to create something that I personally like a lot.

I have my own office, and I'm there during the evenings and weekends. But during the week, I'm sitting in the middle of my studio, talking with everybody, deciding together every detail, every pallette, every yarn, every colour.

I was a kid at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, so a lot of things changed. You had pop music coming up, with David Bowie, you had new television programmes and all these things. I was fascinated.

I have nothing against glamorous dressing.

Coincidence is important, the convergence of different ideas.

I think by my father owning a store, I was definitely aware of the commercial aspect of selling clothes. His shop was a place I enjoyed spending time in as a boy, so I learned things almost by osmosis at times, by literally just being around all the action and not really despite myself.

Fashion shows are really my way of communication.

When I get very stressed, I make jam. I like things that produce a quick result, because fashion has such a long lead time. With jam, you start, and two-three hours later, you have 36 little pots, all full.

I have a responsibility to the people who work for me, the manufacturers I work with. There is no point to clothes that don't sell.

To create a collection, you need a narrative - an explanation to tell the team.

I'm a very big fan of winter-flowering shrubs and bulbs. You have the smell, you have the color - it's really like a present from God when something like that is in flower in the middle of the snow.

When I have to do something fast, I wear the most unflattering rubber pants over my pants and a big easy sweater. I can get on my knees in the garden in whatever condition, and when I'm done, I can take it off, get in the car, and drive to the office. It's the most practical thing.

People get this very romantic vision of a fashion designer who in one night makes 25 sketches and in the morning throws them on the table and there are a lot of women in white aprons with the pins on the lapel and they start to grab the sketches and... It's not like that.

I'm known for color and prints and embroideries.

In the design process, there's a need to be culturally comprehensive.

For me, it's really like, okay, if you go far with the unexpected materials and unexpected proportions or volumes, then keep the colors quite simple and straightforward for men.