Olivier Theyskens Quotes

I have been asked to collaborate with fashion houses using my artwork, which I will probably do.

I always have a soft spot in my heart for New York designers and independent designers, people who are doing the fashion equivalent of what I'm trying to do in film.

I love working with Prada, I would do it all the time if I could. Working with them is like working on a film: it is very collaborative.

I'd want to start being a creative director of a specific line, like Adidas, for example. If they called me up to collaborate on something, I would do it.

I see different artists making clothing lines and people respected it.

I don't think I'm an artist or that I'm doing anything superintellectual. What's important to me is to get a visceral reaction from people, for them to want that coat because they think it's beautiful.

In the last 20 years of collecting contemporary African art, I have been bombarded by incredible shapes and colors that I now want to translate into clothes.

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind, so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey, whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians, artists, actors and sportsmen.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

The reason I do this job is because I started to be a painter. Making money in art was difficult. The easiest way to make money was to use art for some other reason. One of the easiest and most interesting from an economic point of view was fashion. Fashion pays.

Fashion week is very inspiring, and you can't look at things one dimensionally. And I think that everyone who works in this industry has a very three-dimensional view of what fashion is and what art is.

I really think that if I had met Picasso during peacetime, nothing would have happened.

I wouldn't want to do an average fashion line. I'd want it to be an amazing piece of art.

Film has always been a really good tool for me to communicate emotion about why I create a collection. I'm probably one of the first designers to make short films.

My biggest satisfaction is always when I make something beautiful and well-done that I can see on a real man or woman - not only in the glossy magazines.

One of my best friends, Stephen Sprouse, Bill Dugan, and I worked designing clothes, doing every conceivable thing. New York was a really intoxicating period for me, literally and figuratively. There was a lot of overlap with Andy Warhol, Studio 54, and Halston.

I love being a fashion designer.

The worlds of art and fashion have always been very intertwined at Dior. Francois-Xavier Lalanne and his wife, Claude, for instance, did windows for Monsieur Dior. Dior himself was a gallerist before becoming the revolutionary fashion designer we all know.

I think my collection is doing really well, but collaborating is actually just a nice exercise in doing something different. For example, I do things very differently for Moncler that I wouldn't specifically do for me. For me, I can do whatever I want. With other companies, you have to stay responsible to them.

I am extremely involved in the design process of both my brands, Winter Kate and House of Harlow 1960.

I enjoy seeing how my friends - Proenza Schouler, Zac Posen, Rodarte - use clothes to create their vision and art.

There are so many designers that I love, and I'm so lucky that I get to work with so many of them and sometimes spend time with them.

I first met Michael Angel when he came to my office with a box of prints and asked me whether I thought he should make dresses from the prints.

A lot of my peers don't think about collaborating the way I do. My approach is to imagine my world. The Jason Wu woman isn't just floating around in a beautiful dress. I like to know where she's going, what she likes. I'm not just in the fashion business. I'm in the lifestyle business.