Dries van Noten Quotes

The explosion of museum exhibitions is only a mirror image of what has happened to fashion itself this millennium. With the force of technology, instant images and global participation, fashion has developed from being a passion for a few to a fascination - and an entertainment - for everybody.

The Internet has destroyed irony in the world, or at least wounded it considerably. What are we to do about an invention whose end result is that starving people in China are looking up things on marthastewart.com?

I have fashion designers that I definitely respect. After working for a few years in the industry, you want to branch out and do your own thing and I think that's something that has always been important to me is strengthening the brand and just sticking to "this is who we are, this is our identity, this is who we're going to be". I definitely respect other designers but I don't necessarily have one that I look up to.

I love fashion and beauty and all those things, I still do but I think that it has changed the shift, that the greed is ruling the planet right now.

I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable.

I think we are becoming more and more linked, and before long, we'll all be one culture. It's happening in every field, not just fashion. Actually, I think the only hope for peace is if culture is homogenized. Unfortunately, money seems to be the only solution to political disagreements. If we are all linked through culture and trade, it won't be worth fighting each other.

I can't think of a 30- or 40-year-old who can behave like Mugabe. They wouldn't even know where to begin, and given their own educational exposure, I think it will be very positive for Africa.

At least 35 years ago, you didn't have the internet telling you every single thing that happened in every school and college around the world.

It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.

I think there are going to be some social changes that take place due to the Internet, and the availability of the tools to more and more people. I think you are going to find a lot of people re-cutting movies and changing them, making them into their own movies.

Facion goes in cycles but nothing has changed. When it's ridiculous it's more ridiculous than ever, and when it's wonderful it becomes more wonderful than ever because now more people think: "I dress the body I have, not I have to change the body to wear the fashion." That's what I admire about the growth of the fashion industry. I also think it's wonderful that there is the opportunity to use different textures and fabrics on different colour skins. I am inspired by that.

I often pass a farm with cows grazing in the field and I think to myself how terrible it is that human beings grow other animals just to kill them and eat them. Most of us think of vegetarians as nuts and I'm not a vegetarian but I wouldn't be surprised if we came to a time in 50 or 100 years when civilized people everywhere refused to eat animals.

I hope progressive ways of thinking will permeate the "mainstream" more and more in the coming years. Goddess knows we have endured a very long spell (thirty plus years) of regressive thinking and hyper conservativism dominating our culture and national discourse. It necessitates risk taking and rule breaking by people in all walks of life to swing that pendulum back though.

I think the biggest shift is the way people look at and have access to fashion. It's already old the minute you've seen it, and we've already moved on. Fashion has become very in and out. Back in the days when I started, you would wait for Vogue to come out, and that is where you would see what people wore that month. Now we are looking at what someone is wearing this second.

People get very trapped where they are. When they hear "fashion" they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist. If you can bring your own concept or your viewpoint and translate it not down but out, then you're really successful in the truest sense.

Around 400 million people in the last year got a smartphone. If you think that’s a big deal, imagine the impact on that person in the developing world.

It's a global fashion thing; because of the Internet it has gotten really small. It's cluttered, but it's gotten small.

I think future generations will see the invention of the Internet as having been as important as the invention of the printing press. It’s the democratizing tool of all tools. As long as no one can control the flow of information, then freedom always has a chance.

I think we're going to see a move away from that, because young people - digital natives who spend their life on the Internet - get saturated. It's like a fashion trend, and becomes a sign of a lack of sophistication.

I think the world is really small today, and fashion, from that end of it, it's instantaneous everywhere.

If you were president 50 years ago, the tragedy in Syria might not even penetrate what the American people were thinking about on a day to day basis. Today, they're seeing vivid images of a child in the aftermath of a bombing.

I think it's important that there is a change, especially in fashion.

I think when we opened in 2001, it was holy ground. There was nothing here. Back then, being on the Dubai Creek was an amazing position, and I would come one or two times a year, max. Now it's so different. The travel dilemma has disappeared and it is so easy to get to Dubai. What is it, seven hours from London? It's pretty easy.

It's really interesting because 50 years ago, if you didn't wear a hat everyone looked at you. It just proves that everything is fashion.

The danger with the internet is that you don't need to think about music, you just search for it and you find the answer. Singing used to be part of everyday life. Women sang while pounding corn. Men sang while paddling canoes.