Alexander McQueen Quotes

I gravitated towards the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic.

A couturier must be an architect for design, a sculptor for shape, a painter for color, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for temperance.

I am a clothes maker, and that's all I am. I only want to talk about the making of the clothes. I don't feel the need to go out there and explain that.

What's important to a fashion designer? It's much more than learning how to make clothes. In fact, that merely makes you a dressmaker. It doesn't make you into a fashion designer.

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.

When we put the antlers on the model and then draped over it the lace embroidery that we had made, we had to poke them through a £2,000 piece of work. But then it worked because it looks like she's rammed the piece of lace with her antlers. There's always spontaneity. You've got to allow for that in my shows.

After months of preparation working with a stylist who explained to me how a fashion house runs and the process of making a dress, I developed a respect for the patience and skill it takes to design these dresses.

Every time that I wanted to give up, if I saw an interesting textile, print what ever, suddenly I would see a collection.

I did learn a lot from 'Project Runway,' things I could incorporate into my own life.

When you see a fashion show, you see those seven minutes of what was six months of tedious work of, you know, going up an inch and down an inch, changing it from one shade of red to another shade of red. So it's the same as any creative process. The result is what we see, but the process is really labor intensive and work.

I've learned a tremendous amount over the years by watching designers work. I now have a good understanding of what sits well on the body, not to mention the importance of a great cut and quality.

I work on fittings, mostly. You know, I sketch less and less in my work. I sketch for the show sometimes, but then it becomes more conceptual. But when I don't sketch, it becomes more pragmatic.

So many designers only sketch and leave pattern-making to others. Pattern-making is important so you know the structure. Then if someone tells me, 'I can't make a pattern from that sketch,' I can tell them, 'I will make it' and then they are quiet. If I can't make it, I don't design it.

With fashion, you really need to understand the aspects of construction. Not just design on an iPad.

When you are a designer, what's important is to be aware of things. Everything should lead to an idea, a line to follow, a movement.

Sheer obstinacy is very very important for anybody who wants to create.

With McQueen you have so much at your fingertips. That is what's so incredible about this place. Lee built an amazing house, an English house - and that is very important - where creativity rules, where you can do whatever you want to do for the shows because no one's saying: where's your basic dress, where's your three button jacket?

I think the important thing about staying creative and staying sharp and original is not to look back too much.

The most important thing is to keep creating and following my inklings as they come into being and acting on them.

I like to make mechanical stuff. Once I make a film I have to do whatever I can make onstage I make it onstage.

With my designs and my ideas, I want to please myself first. I'm always very stressed about making a new proposition every season. But in a way, it's a kind of addiction. In another way, it's a crazy pressure. I try to stay quiet about the whole situation, because fashion itself can be crazy, and everyone wants a part of you.

I love design, so it's important for me to have a creative outlet.

My mom was always making me clothes. We'd go to the fabric store, pick out patterns, and it was a creative process. I heard that word a lot growing up: creative.

Fashion keeps me designing: the love of change, the idea that the next one will be the right one, the nonstop dialogue

Some days I have a knot in my stomach because I've got to sit down and come up with something in womenswear that no one else came up with.