Issey Miyake Quotes

My touchstone started out being - and is still - exploring the ways by which to make clothing from a single piece of cloth.

My family has always made clothes. Growing up I can remember sewing machines being everywhere.

Making clothes involves what I like...color, pattern, shape and movement...I like the everyday process...the people, the pressure, the surprise of seeing the work come alive walking and dancing around on strangers. Like red lipstick on the mouth, my products wake up and brighten and bring the wearer to life...drawing attention to her beauty and specialness...her moods and movements...her dreams and fantasies.

I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.

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.

My father was a tailor, my mother a machinist.

I model irregular clothing.

I think pattern makers are some of the most underrated, undervalued people in fashion. They're the people who are sometimes the geniuses in designing clothing.

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

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.

If you take away print and embroidery, you have to challenge yourself a bit more on the cut.

In my research, I learned that the way these twenties pieces are constructed, in one garment, can be very simple, and in others they can be very complicated. That's what made an elusive fit that we can't always get these days. Knowing this, I would like to share some of these secrets and use them in a collection.

One thing I learned is how much easier it is to write about clothes than it is to make them.

Then I learned how to do wraparounds and things like that. I had no experience.

All of my work stems from the simplest of ideas that go back to the earliest civilizations: making clothing from one piece of cloth. It is my touchstone.

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

With imagination and personal creativity, people who sew can design the way they look to suit themselves.

Fashion designing involves a lot of work, and, as opposed to the general perception, it is different from costume designing for films. While a fashion designer can take up a costume designer's role, it is not possible vice versa.

I spent a long time learning how to construct clothes, which is important to do before you can deconstruct them.

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.

Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.

Cut in dressmaking is like grammar in language. A good design should be like a well made sentence and it should only express one idea at a time.

I do love a bit of fashion. I grew up around a lot of it as my mum and dad had clothing stores so my mum was always designing a lot, and I definitely had that as an influence.

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.

Cuts of clothes and shapes of clothes are really important.