John Varvatos Quotes

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

Personally, I have had sometimes moments where I thought my idea behind the idea of a collection - the concept maybe - something that we don't see at the end on the catwalk, I think the way it was, the genesis in my mind, was probably artistic, an artistic approach.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

I just get an idea and then all of a sudden I've got a song.

Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label 'inspiration'.

Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.

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

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.

I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

I love Pinterest! Pinterest is absolutely phenomenal when you're trying to come up with a costume design.

We don't design by calculator or by demographics or anything like that. We really are a group of creative, sensitive people. We have our charmed little world where we get to make things. We're really lucky.

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.

Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting.

When I look at designer books I am sometimes puzzled why they don't share their inspiration, when it's obvious somebody had such great inspiration.

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

Designers don't live in a vacuum; they are not blind to what's going on. They, too, will be inspired by what they see, and that will come out in their work.

A dress is an emotional thing to make. You've got to fall in love with it and not just with the dress - the whole process of designing it has to be a good experience.

It's weird: I don't really know where I pull my inspiration from. I think it's N.E.R.D.

I'd love to get in a room with Kanye at some point, have a conversation, and see if something cooks up.

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations.

Sometimes you do know where the ideas are coming from and sometimes you don't. You might get a song coming through that you just don't know about.

I really admire songwriters or any kind of writer, painter or artist that says, "I'm going to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning and spend this time to this time creating." I do that sometimes, but the songs I like the best come as gifts from somewhere. It's almost like you didn't do anything, like you can't take credit for it because you sat down and the melody and words came out.