Alexander McQueen Quotes

I got involved in fashion by accident. When I got to New York, my intention was to have enough money to eat and to stay and I don't have to leave. I just loved New York - the energy, the culture, the freedom.

My mom modeled and made clothes, so I always had such an appreciation for design. And then Gossip Girl completely blew open the door to fashion for me.

I didn't understand anything about fashion until I moved to Canada when I was 9. That's when I learned English and was exposed to fashion magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.

My mother was a very big inspiration. She loved fashion. I loved art in school, and I was very good at drawing. I could sit at the table forever and just dream up collections and draw.

I knew I wanted to be an artist at age 5 or 6. I always drew. At 8, I was permitted to study.

I always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of 12.

My mom modeled and made clothes, so I always had such an appreciation for design.

My fascination with women's clothes began very early. My mother was a very fashionable woman. She also made her own clothes. She had these fashion magazines, and I would draw the women in them. My middle school art teacher suggested that I have a fashion drawing show.

Fashion is a great love of mine. I'm used to looking really hard for clothes that I like and I am really fortunate to have an amazing team of talented artists who work day and night with me to create our visions and make them come alive.

Since I was about a little boy, I've always wanted to do music.

I know I wasn't allowed to go to fashion school; I can't cut a dress like Galliano, right? But I had enough wherewithal to go to that studio on my first collection and bring Kim, [stylist] Christine Centenera, Ian Connor, Theophilus London, Virgil Abloh...they all came down to [Vetements/Balenciaga designer] Demna Gvasalia's studio that night and hung out.

I love everything about fashion. I even love the fittings and watching it evolve from a pattern to a muslin to the final product.

I always wanted to be a fashion designer and I learned costume illustration in high school. That was an incredible high school. It was more like a college. I'm moving more in that direction, just kind of merchandising my name.

I think what I create is serious fashion, but I don't want to keep my focus on that. You have to look at a lot of different things. I mean, people are always surprised when they find out that my favorite show is RuPaul's Drag Race.

I never wanted to be a fashion designer, although there is a book somewhere of fashion design I did for a collection when I was seven years old. I always wanted to be an actor.

I knew since the age of four that I wanted to be a clothing designer. I read an article in LIFE magazine about two young ladies that graduated from Parsons School of Design, and when they graduated they went to Paris and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor opened a boutique for them. So I thought, "Oh, I just have to go to Parsons, that's all."

My parents never mentioned anything about fashion in our household, instead we used to talk about literature, theatre, and arts...this is why I have kept a real relation with the Art world, by putting books from the beginning in my shops' windows.

I was also very lucky to be able to work with talented people while I was learning. I didn't actually go to fashion school. I worked with Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy which was a really pivotal experience for me. He taught me a lot about being faithful to your own voice and to really believe in your own voice and that's made a big difference.

No one is an inventor in the fashion business. Designers recreate fashion.

My mother worked in fashion design and she used to show me all of these looks. She tried to get me to wear fitted jeans in high school. This is when big jeans were popping.

And I'm the first one to tell people to break the rules. But you can only break the rules once you know what the rules are. The other thing is, fashion is the last design discipline to actually have academic texts and historical analysis.

It was not the story of design or clothes, it was the fantasy of women that made me want to work in fashion.

I love fashion, but maybe I love it peripherally.

I am not a good professional of fashion. I am not an expert about how clothes are constructed or the history of fashion. I never start with fashion. I always think of the girl and her personality - because all that matters to me when you look at a page is, "Do you want to be that girl?"

I never knew that I would be actually designing clothes or as into fashion as I am now.