SUZY MENKES

Fledgling designers need investment - but how much easier it is to put them in a dead man or woman's shoes, perhaps also backing the new designer's namesake line, but only as what the French call a 'danseuse,' a plaything.

Clothes are like friends.

With the traditional six-month lead time on the delivery of international show content, designer collections can be outpaced by the so-called fast fashion chains. H&M, Topshop and Zara, or even Target and J. Crew, would have their versions for sale before the designer looks hit the stores.

Just as in life you always marry the same man, so I think you always buy the same clothes over time.

There is no doubt that online shopping has fed the craze for speed, because when you can't touch the fabric or try on the outfit, the only emotion you experience is the excitement of the purchase and the thrill of beating everyone else to it.

With a global society hungry for luxury, distribution and supply chains are now as important for executives as a hands-on feel for products.

At the 'Times,' all journalists on every subject followed the same rules and were supposed to meet the same standards, so I never really thought about fashion writing as being in a bubble.

The way that people dress makes them part of an army, dressed in their own uniform, determined to do something.

I was trained as journalist never to use the word 'I,' never to put my own opinion there. In fact, if you had a dollar or a euro for every time I use the word 'I,' you would be a poor person. But this is not true in general. I like the idea of being able to stand away and make a judgement.

I do believe fashion should work as hard as a woman does.

If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion? The answer goes far beyond the collections and relates to the speed of fast fashion. There is no longer a time gap between when a small segment of fashion-conscious people pick up a trend and when it is all over the sidewalks.

The clothes that fire up my emotions are colorful and 'different' pieces. My eye still picks out gilded-cloque glamour from among Burberry's streamlined trench coats or a hand-printed coat from Dries Van Noten.

Who needs to graduate from Central Saint Martins in London or New York's Fashion Institute of Technology when a homemade outfit can go viral on YouTube with millions of hits?

Smartphones are so fabulous in so many ways that it seems daft to be nostalgic about the days when an image did not go round the world in a nanosecond.

As a journalist, I cannot help imagining with excitement a new era with a face-off between Hedi Slimane at YSL and Raf Simons at Dior - a magnificent battle of style and wills to echo the Armani/Versace, Gucci/Prada or even Chanel/Schiaparelli face-offs of earlier years. But I remind myself that this is not a game of chess.

Change is good; it's what fashion is all about.

I am thrilled to become international 'Vogue' editor at Conde Nast International, which has a real commitment to journalistic excellence, and to have the opportunity to write for a wider global audience through the 'Vogue' websites.

In the mid-1990s, when I stopped having to run from the shows to the film developing lab and first saw digital images, I blessed technology and was convinced that my working life was changing for the better.

I knew him, but never felt that I got really close to Saint Laurent. But who really did? Betty Catroux, maybe.

My clothes are fabulous - colourful, fun and by some very special designers. They deserve a better life than being sleeping beauties in a bed of tissue inside a trunk.

The clothes most worn by people are the clothes least commented on by the press.

Clothes, as much as music, have an eerie echo of time and place.

We know that creative people have all sorts of demons.

I was taken to my first fashion show - Nina Ricci haute couture - in Paris by the White Russian princess, down on her luck, whom I was boarding with in Paris in 1963. I was captivated by the glamour of the gilded salon, the elegant clothes, and the audience of grand ladies.

I don't really believe in elegance. Ever since I first came to France many years ago to do the Chambre Syndicale course, I always felt I was somehow lacking, first of all being British - obviously a disaster! But I was also puzzled with this idea that you have to tie your Hermes scarf just right, or you can only wear black.